Rogue Columnist

Climate, trains, downtown

Historically, May was when the temperature in Phoenix crept up to 100. Almost all week, it's been around 105 for the high. "Climate change is a hoax," as they say. The past 12 months were the warmest ever recorded, yet there is no debate, no discussion, least of all in a city likely to be heavily affected, Two days of hot wind cleared out the smoke from the wildfires, leaving only the usual smog. Better than nothing. At a book signing Tuesday night at the Arizona Biltmore, several people came up to say how much they depend on Rogue Columnist to speak truth to power, reality to the Kookocracy. It's something for me to keep in mind if some think I am just shouting the same old stuff with tiresome certitude.

Light rail seems to be doing well every time I ride it — and I depend on it (WBIYB). I can't speak for the line from Camelback to Chris Town, but otherwise it's packed-to-busy. It's curious at stations to see signs that identify trains going to Tempe and Mesa, or 19th and Montebello, but never downtown Phoenix. If you get on light rail at the Sky Harbor stop, you'd never know which way was the city center. Not smart. Tempe is trying to build a streetcar — a good sign. Otherwise, transit policy is a hash. Buses have been gutted (Your Tax Cuts at Work).

I'm not sure I understand the so-called West Link line. Is it really intended to go to Tolleson? If so, this shows how the region still doesn't get rail. Heavy commuter rail should be a priority to all the outlying suburbs, with a hub at Union Station, where passengers could connect with buses and eventually a light-rail spur as was done in San Jose. Commuter trains would provide fast service to Glendale, Peoria, Tolleson, Goodyear, Buckeye, Chandler, Gilbert, etc. The rail right-of-way is there and would require public money to expand capacity, as well as negotiations with the private railroads. But this has been done successfully around the country.

Phoenix 101: Ambulance days

The author, left, and partner Russ Covert with Medic 79 at the downtown Phoenix ambulance station in the "hellish" July of 1976

In 1974, at the age of seventeen-and-a-half, I became the youngest registered emergency medical technician in Arizona. I started as a dispatcher at Kord's Ambulance, which had the distinction of being owned by a relative of Linda Ronstadt. Soon, however, I was gravitating to the Kord's operation in Scottsdale, where my Coronado High friend Marc Terrill was working. There, under the leadership of the legendary Chuck West, the company had established the first advanced life support unit in the Southwest. It was a sea change from the throw-and-go days of ambulance drivers. This ambulance was equipped with IVs, EKG, telemetry, defibrillator, intubation gear, drugs — all the things seen on a modern rescue rig. An RN accompanied the two EMTs, who were trained as true paramedics in a program at the old Scottsdale Memorial Hospital under Dr. Bert McDowell.

From riding along and attending classes on my days off, I wrangled a transfer to Scottsdale in the fall. I was one of "Chuck's boys" (there were two female medics, too, a major breakthrough). The ambulance itself was revolutionary: Life-saving treatments could be begun at the scene. My early time was very difficult. The old guard was dominated by former combat medics who had served in Vietnam: Men who had performed surgery after rappelling into hot landing zones and no doubt they were PTSD'd to the moon. Unlike today, they had no use for the young person in their midst. They were tough, demanding, unmindful of, and quite contemptuous of, what is now called "my self-esteem." So I had to earn it. I learned more from them in a short period of time than I ever have in my life. From not even being sure of hearing a blood pressure while the siren was wailing, I learned to start IVs, intubate, triage, do CPR right, everything. I finally merited their respect. It remains one of the most thrilling accomplishments of my life, and makes me feel sad for young people today who are tossed into over-their-head jobs because they are cheap and never given proper seasoning or mentoring, whether rough or gentle.

They taught me a useful phrase and behavior from 'Nam that has served me well: Run frosty.

Stanton in the Valley

I want to expand on comments I made to Steve Goldstein's Here and Now on KJZZ Wednesday about Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton making a trip to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area to recruit businesses.

Foremost, this is a great start, something I've been advocating for more than a decade. The future to diversifying the Phoenix economy lies in California and Asia, not in Dubai. That the trip is so public is a bit puzzling; real success will come from years of quietly cultivating contacts. Phoenix needs to open offices in Southern and Northern California to recruit companies. I was also disheartened that Barry Broome of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council invited himself along. GPEC must please the suburbs at least as much as the city, and given the preference of the leasing boyz for suburbia, the organization is incapable of addressing the city's needs, particularly for jobs and capital investment in the central city.

Now, a reality check. Phoenix is not going to attract headquarters from Silicon Valley. You can't touch a fixer-up cottage in Palo Alto for less than $1.5 million and it doesn't make the economy skip a step. Workers would rather commute from Modesto than move to Chandler. This is the world's foremost technology cluster, and it happened because of all the things Phoenix lacks: World-class universities, trillions of dollars in government investment, an exceptionally high number of college graduates, attracting vast amounts of capital and a large entrepreneurial class focused on anything but real estate. It has a real downtown, in San Francisco. It is diverse and tolerant. There is no Santa Clara County Sheriff Joe. A real cluster is not a couple of semiconductor fabs in the suburbs. Phoenix can no more be "a mini-Silicon Valley" than the downtown Phoenix Public Market, and I love it, can be a mini-Pike Place Market. Cisco is not going to move from the Valley to "the Valley."

Michael Crow

When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University in July 2002, the watch began almost immediately: How quickly would he use ASU as a springboard to a bigger and better job? It hasn't happened. Crow said he had a ten-year plan for "the new American university" and he has been as good as his word. Crow was one of the three people that progressive Arizonans vested their faith in during those hopeful years. Janet Napolitano played defense against the Kookocracy, but abandoned the governor's office to become President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security with little left behind as a legacy. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon suffered a lost weekend of a second term, badly downgrading any assessment of the man in full. I always thought it was a sign of Arizona's unhealthy lack of private-sector stewards that all three stars were on the public payroll, but such was the case. Only Crow, to many the least likely, stuck and kept faith.

Crow was dealt a bad hand, if a very good salary: The Legislature had been cutting general-fund appropriations to the universities since the 1980s and was virulently anti-education. The state constitution mandated that ASU, especially, take virtually every qualified in-state student without giving it the means to pay for this obligation. The university had grown into a gargantuan thing. It had few friends at the capitol as opposed to, say, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Yet even Crow's critics must admit he played this hand masterfully. It wasn't long after his arrival that the UofA, which always considered itself "the university," was enviously muttering, "We wish we had a Michael Crow."

The vision of a New American University was buttressed around finding new revenue. I learned this early, when Crow asked me how ASU could be of more help in illuminating the economy. I sent him a list of some 30 indicators that were not tracked in the echo chamber of population growth and construction permits. This ended up in the economics department where the mandate was to produce it, and find a way to sell it.

The exit interview

The urbanist Yuri Artibise left Phoenix last year, returning to Vancouver. It's part of a continuing brain drain, although to be sure such assets as ASU continue to bring in new creatives. I don't know where the tally stands, but I fear Phoenix continues to lose more than it attracts. Architect Taz Loomans recently conducted an interesting "exit interview" with Artibise. It made me realize that it's been five years since I got the first inkling that the Arizona Republic would take away my column, which would eventuate in me leaving town. So I thought I'd use Loomans' questions as a test for myself.

What do you miss most about Phoenix? My good friends. (I tried to select one "most"; for more, see my additions in the comments section).

What did Phoenix have that Seattle doesn’t? It is the repository of so much of my history, so many of my hopes. My mother and grandmother, long dead, are so alive on the streets of Willo, Roosevelt and Storey. The church where I was baptised is still going, as is my grade school, still in its inspiring, grand building, and enchanting Encanto Park. Union Station, where I spent countless hours as a child watching trains and dreaming of far-away places. The streets I worked as a paramedic, learning too much too young. The different mountain vistas that always orient me. Phoenix is the home of my heart, a place so mangled, mismanaged, raped and pillaged, but still worth fighting for. No matter how long I am gone, when I return I can drive the streets and walk the neighborhoods as if I had never left. The ghosts of the Hohokam still speak to me on winter nights when the cold wind blows from the High Country and the peculiar acoustics of the valley mingle train whistles and voices of the beloved dead.

Phoenix update

Back from a week in Phoenix, some observations:

1. The place still gives off the quality of a fallen souffle. Sure, a few projects are getting press out in some of the more affluent suburbs, but the utter collapse of four years ago still lingers. It's not for lack of trying by the Usual Suspects: Bottom has been hit, a turnaround is only (xx) years away, cheap land and sunshine will continue to be the basis of the economy, blah, blah, blah. But the old growth machine will not sputter back to life for one more run (with championship golf!). Too many crapola tract houses, too much debt, too few well-paying jobs, no speculative bubble driven by liar loans and securitized mortgages sold on a historic scale. What's Plan B? There is none.

2. A lack of seriousness pervades the state. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton tweets, "In Phoenix, we have a full commitment to sustainability: Sky Harbor Airport Dedicates Solar Power System." Space does not allow us to fully deconstruct these 104 characters, but we can make a start. Sky Harbor is a red giant of concrete and air pollution, contributing mightily to the heat island and dirty, unhealthy sky, and this is somehow redeemed by a "solar power system" that will power...the airport? No, the linked news story says it generates "enough to handle half the power needs of the rental car center, east economy parking lots and toll booths." Oh. (A real reporter might want to know if this includes generating electricity for the rental car center air conditioning, too, which seems unlikely, and how long the solar operation will have to run before it "repays" the fossil-fuel inputs it required and may still require).

Phoenix 101: The capitol

Channel 12's Brahm Resnik asked me to nominate the three most significant Arizona political events since statehood. It's a bit like wanting a cinephile to name only three favorite movies. I settled for 1) statehood, which was not a given when it happened; 2) The congressional delegation's ultimately successful decades-long pursuit of Colorado River water, and 3) SB 1070, which is a bright red marker for the hotbed of intolerance, ignorance, extremism and backwardness into which the state has descended. Other events could contend, such as Barry Goldwater's 1952 defeat of Sen. Ernest McFarland, marking the birth of the Republican Party's ascendancy.

One of the most telling political stories, however, doesn't concern politicians or elections, at least not directly. It's about the old capitol building. The copper-domed structure was actually built as the territorial capitol and completed in 1901. The architect was James Riely Gordon, who designed many court houses in Texas, as well as a grand one for Bergen County, N.J. Gordon set aside his usual Romanesque Revival style to create a territorial capitol made from native materials. It was originally intended to be much grander, but the territory cut back funding. Additions made in 1918 and 1938 preserved the Gordon design.

President Kennedy (perhaps apocryphally) quipped that it was the ugliest state capitol in America. This was certainly not true: The Alaska capitol resembles an insurance company office; the Ohio statehouse with its forever-incomplete dome defines homeliness and lack of proportion, and North Carolina's looks like the court house for a small, poor county. The only saving grace for New Mexico's building is that it is in Santa Fe. To me, the old Arizona capitol always held a certain modest grace, particularly when I was growing up and it dominated the vista at the foot of Washington Street. But it's also true, odd and perhaps telling that Montana, which still doesn't have 1 million people, has a much bigger, grander capitol. And otherwise poor, conservative states such as West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi boast majestically beautiful statehouses.

Halftime in Arizona

Note to national and international Rogue readers: As Arizona marks 100 years of statehood this month, you'll have to put up with more than the usual number of AZ- and Phoenix-centric posts.

In 1962, Arizona marked its 50th year as a state. It's a vivid memory for me, although I was but a child. I loved the commemorative seal with the cactus wren, so much more appealing than today's gaudy centennial emblem. Fifty years of statehood was a remarkable event for those still living who had witnessed statehood and lived in Arizona Territory, my grandmother among them. The state in 1962 had barely more than 1 million people, with Phoenix not yet at the half-million mark. Phoenix was becoming a big city with comforts unimagined 50 years before, especially air conditioning. Still, the frontier was close enough to touch, living history was all around and much of the state was still wilderness. Vast empty distances separated the settled areas and those were compact and clear in their purpose.

Prescott, for example, the onetime territorial capital, was an enchanting little town with appealing rough edges. None of today's sprawl existed. It had only recently lost its status as a division point on the Santa Fe Railway between Phoenix and Williams Jct. Mining and ranching were the economy. The highway up Yarnell Hill was notoriously treacherous. Flagstaff was a major railroad town, also depending on sawmills for the logging industry and Arizona State College. The Mogollon Rim was virtually uninhabited, just one of many parts of the state as wild as ever. The state highways were two lanes, taking you to rich history that wasn't across the street from a Wal-Mart. Even in Phoenix, you could see old cowboys, the real thing, living out their last years in the elegantly-designed-but-neglected old apartments that graced the neighborhood between Seventh Avenue and the capitol.

Phoenix 101: Central Avenue II

Midtown, including the Viad Tower, left, after the big boom.

The first defining event of today's Central Avenue was the real-estate boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s. With land from Fillmore Street to Camelback Road upzoned for skyscrapers and money flowing from the deregulated savings and loan industry, the city was remade by a huge real-estate boom. Stuck with the disjointed set of highrises outside the old central business district, the city tried to put planners lipstick on the pig in the 1970s by christening the area from the railroad tracks to Camelback and Seventh Avenue to Seventh Street as the Central Corridor. As I wrote in the previous post, the visionaries of the 1960s and 1970s imagined Central would become Phoenix's version of Wilshire Boulevard. That never happened. Phoenix lacked the economy, assets and ambition of Los Angeles. But it gave a big try in the '80s and '90s.

These were the years that saw the rise of the Dial Tower at Central and Palm Lane. It was the new headquarters of the old Greyhound Corp. and remains, with its distinct deodorant container shape and copper skin the only truly arresting skyscraper on Central. Two bank highrises were built just south of Osborn, along with a little World Trade Center-style tower at Virginia, displacing the Palms Theater, and a few midrises. USWest anchored one of two skyscrapers erected on the northeast corner of Central and Thomas, where the iconic Bob's Big Boy, beloved of cruisers, stood. But this was nothing compared with what was planned. Back in the 1960s, the idea of a monorail running down Central was floated. It was revived in the '80s as part of a developer's plan to build, north of Indian School, the tallest building in the country with the monorail connecting the mammoth skyscraper to Sky Harbor.

Phoenix 101: Central Avenue I

Central and Monroe, around the year I was born (1956)

 

"The trouble with Central is that it isn't central to anything any more." So spoke a major leasing executive in 2000, over a breakfast I had been dragooned into to get my mind right about what had happened to my hometown. He was a fool, of course, and not merely because he helped drive the local economy into its present depression. Central Avenue does much more than demarcate street numbers from east to west. It lies at the heart of a far-flung Valley metroplex. Central is the touchstone of Phoenix's history, with more stories than a hundred blog posts could tell. It remains the most interesting street in the city. And it will be the critical marker for a quality future, if the metropolitan area stands a chance of attaining one.

In the old city, Central connected the discrete parts that made Phoenix whole. Starting at South Mountain Park, the largest municipal park in the world, it crossed two-lane Baseline Road. In both directions spread out the enchanting Japanese Flower Gardens. Ahead were bands of farmland, pastures and citrus groves as it descended to the Salt River, with the skyline and far mountains arms-length clear in the distance. After going through the tiny south Phoenix business district, you crossed one of two bridges over the river (Mill Avenue being the other), then entered the city proper. In the early days, both the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads sited their depots on Central, before moving to the new Union Station at Fourth Avenue in the 1920s. Soon, Depression public works built an underpass that for decades held four very tight lanes. Before the overpasses at Seventh avenue and street, this was the only sure way under what were then busy rail lines. Everybody honked when they drove through the concrete tunnel.

Coming out at Jefferson, Central was in the heart of a vibrant downtown. The Hotel Adams, Luhrs building and hotel, Heard Building, Security Building, Hotel San Carlos and art deco Valley National Bank tower (nee Professional Building) with its iconic revolving roof sign all faced Central. Other neon faced the street, including from the radio tower on the Greater Arizona Savings building. The avenue was packed with locally owned small businesses, especially retailers. People crowded the sidewalks, where news vendors hawked the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette. During the holidays, Christmas decorations spanned the street. For years, a low-rise coffee shop sat on the southeast (corrected) corner of Central and Van Buren, topped by billboards.

On the ground

I came into the new wing of terminal four at Sky Harbor. It's fancy and the terminal is still being improved. Still, it's difficult not to notice how American airports resemble malls, as if this is the defining and highest aspiration possible for an empire facing decadence and many breaking points. And on the outside, Sky Harbor is brutally ugly. I think of Cincinnati Union Terminal, one of America's most glorious art deco treasures, built to inspire, built for the ages. It's not only in Phoenix. We can't do these things any more.

It was a late flight, so it took a mad scramble to get the last light-rail train headed west at 11:25 (this is the sixth largest city in America?). Once on board, everything is delightful (we built it, you bastards). I am struck again by all the empty and underutilized land along much of the route. Oh, for some urbanism in fillers with capital, as is happening at a frenzied pace in Seattle. Still, it's wonderful to see the convention center, CityScape and downtown ASU campus. Then enfolded in the comforting spaces of my old haunts in Midtown. Central between McDowell and Osborn is the only really filled-in part of the core, with the ghastly exception of the northwest corner of Central and McDowell. Up to Thomas, it is surrounded by the real, walkable neighborhoods of the historic districts.

Here, it's impossible for me not to grow romantic, listening to the train whistles that I heard from my earliest childhood, feeling the cool wind sweep down from the High Country. And Phoenix is never sweeter than on a rainy night. More to come.

Phoenix 101: Wallace and Ladmo

I went to the Muppets movie over the weekend. It was all right. I never watched Sesame Street and the heyday of the Muppets television show was when I didn't even own a TV. In any event, I am a lost demographic to such benign stuff. I grew up in Phoenix, where we had Wallace and Ladmo.

Most children watched a clown show in their cities and towns. Not us. We were brought up on the very adult humor of the Wallace show, which ran from 1954 to 1989 on KPHO. The names changed, from It's Wallace? to Wallace & Company to the Wallace and Ladmo Show. What didn't change was the show's biting humor, satire and irony, along with classic slapstick and cartoons. For the rest of our lives all we could do was feel sorry for the children who were stunted by clown shows.

The regular cast featured Bill Thompson as Wallace, Lad Kwiatkowski as Ladmo and my friend Pat McMahon. Wallace, or Wall-Boy as Ladmo called him, was the host and butt of much humor. Ladmo was the everyman or everykid, full of fun and mischief. McMahon played a host of characters, many of which gave the show its bite. Among them was Gerald the brat, the nephew of the TV station's general manager; Aunt Maud, the doddering, bad driver old coot from Sun City; biker Bobby Joe Trouble; Captain Super, a parody of assorted super heroes, and Boffo the Clown, who hated children.

Election Day

UPDATE: Pearce becomes the first legislator in Arizona history recalled and Stanton is elected Phoenix mayor. Read on if you wish. Definitely join the comment thread.

I've been predicting that Russell Pearce will survive his recall election, but what will it really mean if he's defeated by Jerry Lewis? The district still ends up with a know-nothing lightweight. Yes, it will be a nice screw you to Pearce, the father of SB 1070. But it won't change either the pathology in the Legislature or in the East Valley. It was telling that Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a conservative and Mormon but not a nut, chose not to run (he may have bigger ambitions, but could no better opposition to Pearce be found?). Whatever the outcome, the house (and Senate) that Pearce built will remain. The NRA will remain as powerful as ever. Ditto the Real Estate Industrial Complex and the private prison con. Jan Brewer will still be governor. Tell me what I'm missing. One observer predicted Pearce would run for sheriff when Joe finally retires.

The Phoenix mayoral election, on the other hand, is of major importance. Greg Stanton's internal polls, I am told, show him comfortably ahead of Wes Gullett. The danger here is that potential Stanton voters will stay home, so I am hesitant to even report this. That Gullett ever got this far is a sign that anyone with common sense had better get to the polls.

This contest has been narrowed down to the national meme of "public-sector workers bad." That's most unfortunate. There is indeed an ole-boys system in Phoenix government, but it involves the highly placed, most notoriously the double-dipping of former Police Chief Jack Harris. What's really wrong inside City Hall may be outside the ability of any mayor to fix because it's rooted in the council-manager form of government. Whoever is city manager, the Titanic keeps sailing along. One small example: Spending large sums for consultants to generate reports that could have been done better and cheaper by the city staff. That might have been different had David Krietor or Ed Zuercher (or Sheryl Sculley) been selected city manager. That they weren't tells you everything you need to know. The many interests that feed off the City Hall status quo want things to continue as before.

The periphery

When you're talking Europe, the periphery (Greece, etc.) is ailing, while the core, especially Germany and Scandinavia, is doing well. In Phoenix, the situation is reversed. To be sure, the depression has clobbered huge swaths of Phoenix suburbia, left Pinal County circling the drain and driven a stake into the dreams of Superstition Vistas and Buckeye with 400,000 poor boobs from the Midwest. Glendale is underwater on its super mortgage to hucksters and Westgate is in foreclosure. And the compromised, local-yokel professional seers have once again pushed out their prediction of "recovery," this time to 2015. Still, what little economic activity that's happening is occurring in places such as Scottsdale and Chandler.

The news for the city of Phoenix is gloomy. What few companies are coming to the metro area are setting up shop on the periphery. Banner Health, which killed a hospital on the Phoenix Biosciences Campus that would have led to a quantum leap in its synergies, has teamed up with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to establish a "world class" treatment facility in Gilbert. (The irony here is that Anderson is part of the Texas Medical Center in central Houston that should be the model for the Phoenix campus). ASU and the Mayo Clinic are setting up a medical school in north Scottsdale. Even as central Phoenix is clearcut with huge swaths of empty land, a big data center chose Chandler for a new operation, among the other new projects and expansions that the suburbs can boast. Even within the city, venerable law firm Fennemore Craig stabbed downtown (well, Midtown) in the back, relocating to 24th and Camelback.

As far as I can tell, this isn't even being discussed in the Phoenix mayoral race. Yet it's one of the biggest problems facing the city and metro area.

Phoenix 101: Sky Harbor

I was always a child of the railroads, so Union Station held much more magnetism for me than the airport. Still, in the 1960s, Sky Harbor was a sweet little airport. It had a romantic name. The old blond-brick West Terminal and tiny control tower hearkened back to aviation's infancy — it had only been six decades since the Wright Brothers' first powered flight. You boarded by stairs — jetways were several years off. The new East Terminal was graced by a dramatic mural of Phoenix's founding myth and flight science above the airy modern waiting room. It also had a second-story observation deck, where one could watch the airplanes, complete with telescopes. Our Cub Scout den was given a tour of the control tower. All this was before hijackings and the rise of the present Security State.

It was a beautiful airport with a certain '50s charm. One reached it from 24th Street along grassy parkways with trees. And back then, the route into downtown was still lined with pleasant motels and "auto courts," all human scale. It had two runways, which were plenty back then. On the south edge was the Air National Guard midair refueling tanker wing (Richard Nixon gave a campaign speech in the big hangar during the 1972 campaign). On the north side, beyond the general aviation hangars, were the Southern Pacific tracks, which carried three passenger trains a day in each direction. The best airplane watching was on 40th Street, which was a two-lane affair that dipped into the riverbed and marked the east boundary of the airport. The 727s and 707s came in right overhead.

Airlines were highly regulated. Hubs were far in the future. So regional players such as Bonanza, Hughes AirWest and Western were as important as United, American and Continental. I made my first airplane flight from LA to Phoenix when I was ten (we had gone on the Sunset Limited, by far the more enchanting journey for me). Flying was special then. People dressed up. Airlines treated you very well. There were no cattle calls or lines from LockUp.

The mayor of hell

Whomever wins the Phoenix mayoral election will get a paycheck, face time on the media, a police detail to drive him or her around and not much else. Facts are stubborn things: Phoenix is the most economically wounded among America's largest cities. The "business model" that built Phoenix for decades is irrevocably broken. When even the developer-economist Elliott Pollack, favorite of the booster rubber chicken circuit, is saying the metro-wide housing market won't come back until at least 2015, things are bad.

Reprising a little history won't hurt. The political leadership of modern Phoenix was created by the Charter Government Movement, which claimed, and largely delivered, a non-partisan, clean, business-backed, professionally run City Hall. With a relatively diverse economy, the age of inexpensive energy, a majority middle class city and major business titans setting the table, little was asked of elected leaders except to continue this status quo. It somewhat fell apart with districting and Terry Goddard's velvet revolution in the 1980s, but the spirit of Charter lived on well into the 21st century.

This is not to say mayors were irrelevant as just one vote on council in a council-manager form of government. Milt Graham, John Driggs, Margaret Hance, Goddard and Skip Rimsza were all leaders of consequence. Sometimes this was for ill: the popular Graham's antipathy to transit set Phoenix back by decades; Hance did many things to hurt the central core. Goddard, by contrast, was an inspiring and transformational mayor. But through all this two things were constant: The economy levitated on "growth" and the old consensus prevailed.

The last titan

It was probably fitting that John Teets died amid the worst economic depression modern Phoenix has ever experienced. The retired head of Greyhound/Dial was the last of a breed that every competitive and livable city must have: A dynamic chief executive of a major local headquarters, passionately committed to the city, able to knock heads and write checks. I'll let Soleri take it from here:

As CEO of Dial, he was one of the last corporate titans who figured prominently in local affairs. He was a headknocker and socialite who helped make Phoenix more than just a branch-office backwater. I was living near Central & Palm Lane when the Dial building was built in 1990. It was part of Teets' stewardship ethic to make a big corporate statement close to but not in downtown. The original plan was to construct two towers, with one perpendicular to the other. As with so many real-estate dreams, this one was only partly realized. The result is a free-standing mountain of a building completely out of scale to its surroundings.

Teets spent lavishly on it but the tapestries he hung in the lobby, or the exquisite garden outside couldn't quite make up for the fact that it was another ostentatious project that seemed so much like the city it was built in: Isolated and strange.

Did Phoenix light rail fail?

My first experience with light rail came living in San Diego in the early 1980s. One segment linked downtown with the border crossing at San Ysidro. It was popular and uncontroversial. "I didn't think one of these could run without graffiti all over it," I heard a visitor from then dysfunctional New York exclaim of the new, bright red trainsets. As a reporter, I wrote about the Trolley, especially the ambitious expansion plans. San Diego is the most Republican of California's big cities, but the light-rail system was begun under Pete Wilson, a mediocre U.S. senator, bad California governor, but stellar San Diego mayor (he was also, along with developer Ernest Hahn, the father of the spectacularly revived downtown). Today, the San Diego Trolley extends 53 miles on three routes.

Then I lived in Denver, where the city started a segment downtown. It too, was popular and widely embraced. Now it comprises 39 miles with another 12 due in two years. I was in Charlotte for the planning of the now-operating Lynx light-rail, a relatively modest 10 miles, but more is in the works. It was the first modern light-rail system in the Old South and, again, widely supported, especially by the business leadership and developers who built hundreds of millions of dollars of projects near the line. Similar success happened in other cities, especially Dallas (!), with its 72-mile system and clammoring of suburbs to get the next line.

The story didn't play out that way in Phoenix. Yes, we built it, you bastards. But it's also time to take stock.

Phoenix 101: South Phoenix

South Phoenix encompasses so much history, so many cultures and distinct districts, it deserves more than one post. Every square mile is special. Still, a start. It's not a separate city such as South Tucson, so I'll go with the style "south Phoenix." When I hear the words "urban village," I reach for my Colt Python plus Speedloaders, so forget about the city's developer-speak term "South Mountain Village." Then there's the matter of geography. For many Anglo Phoenicians, when the city still had some cohesion, "south Phoenix" began at the Southern Pacific tracks. This was, and latently remains, a place where "the other side of the tracks" is a powerful totem (it helped do in the unfortunately named Bentley Projects, the galleries, bookstore and cafe). A subset of "south Phoenix" emerged in the 1960s, to define everything below the somber wall of the Maricopa Freeway. And true south Phoenix is south of the Salt River. All must be dealt with.*

Phoenix's relatively small Mexican-American and African-American populations were historically located south of the tracks. Well into the 1970s, the commonplace offensive term for the latter was used by whites. Schools were segregated and inferior. Poverty and injustice were severe. Corruption by city officials legendary, at least through the 1940s. Most property ownership was controlled by deed covenants that largely excluded minorities (I told you this was a Southern town). Ownership was more possible south of the river, and minorities gathered there. (Most of the city's legendary and now largely lost barrios were north of the Salt, but a few, such as the River Bottom, were in south Phoenix proper). Minorities were also heavily employed as agricultural labor. This was farm country, especially after the completion of the Highline and Western canals by 1913.

The most successful farmers were the Japanese, who arrived early in the 20th century and were able to purchase farms in the 1930s, after Arizona's anti-"Yellow Peril" law was found unconstitutional. Arizonans my age remember them for the stunning Japanese Flower Gardens that ran for miles along Baseline Road. But the Japanese were among the most innovative growers, raising a variety of crops. This also raised much jealousy among Anglo farmers, who were happy to see them, including American citizens, interned during World War II. After this shameful episode, the Japanese, including many of their sons who had fought in the U.S. Army, returned to south Phoenix and farmed again.

All stars

Even the most skeptical auditor of Phoenix's challenges and follies must admit some pride in Major League Baseball's All-Star Game being held there. And in downtown Phoenix, not some "Valley," not in exurban "Glendale, Ariz." Considering how city leaders allowed the central city to circle the drain for decades, visitors will see some impressive efforts at revitalization: CityScape, the Phoenix Convention Center, Sheraton, biosciences campus, ASU downtown and light rail (we built it, you bastards). Oh, for big-city boutique hotels at the Westward Ho and Professional Building. The baseball stadium is ugly, a lost architectural opportunity, but at least it's downtown, an eventuality I highly doubt if it were being built today under present ownership. They can hop a train to Midtown to take in the spectacular Modern Mexican Painting exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum, a pleasant contrast to the general, and generally deserved, reputation of intolerance and racism for the state at large. If you want to boycott, do so against the East Valley and Scottsdale (but not the Poisoned Pen bookstore), not tolerant central Phoenix.

Some quick advice to out-of-towners: It's a dry heat, but so is hell. So is a thermonuclear explosion. Stay hydrated (I freeze bottles of water to carry with me; they melt quickly but you're not left drinking hot water). Avoid much exposure to the sun. Wear light-colored clothes, especially white, and cover as much skin as possible. Keep some popsicles in the freezer at the hotel; have one to help cool down when you come in from outside. Don't do something stupid like climb Camelback Mountain or go "exploring" in the desert. God created air-conditioning for a reason — use it. A dark, cool Mexican restaurant is an especially satisfying hangout in the summer. If the media say the high will be 105, that's in the shade at Sky Harbor. The surface temp on the street is around 140. I hope to hell somebody will give them such advice, so there's not a great All-Star die-off. Too bad City Hall encouraged all that concrete, all that gravel and no shade trees.

Still, the big game is, at best, a temporary respite from the troubles of city and state.

Off the edge

Yet another pipe dream has exploded in the Phoenix Depression. This time Steve Ellman's Westgate "City Center," — the Republic story pimped the development as "the flashy dining and shopping complex that anchors Glendale's football stadium and hockey arena" — is facing foreclosure.

This is time to revisit my 2010 post on Glendale's folly. It's also relevant coming directly after the popular Phoenix 101: Malls. Yet more needs to be said; not to make thin-skinned Phoenicians feel depressed, as is the usual criticism, but to learn something from these costly debacles to move the metro area forward into some kind of broad, non-heat-island-scorched uplands.

The only ones that could be surprised by the Westgate mess are those millions who drank the developer-speak Kool-Aid ("flashy dining and shopping complex" blah blah blah). Every time I was forced to go there for an event, the place was dead. It was far from anything else besides a too-narrow freeway, unless you wanted to farm some cotton or throw up the frames of subdivisions on former farm land. Nor is it flashy, aside from the sun blinding you when it hits the bumper of some jacked-up truck in the parking lot. It is off-the-shelf suburban stuff found everywhere, with the unfortunate distinction that all the asphalt and concrete, besides being ugly, adds a special hellish ambiance even when the surface temp is not 140 degrees.

Phoenix 101: Malls

Sing a city of malls. Actually, I believe the first modern mall west of the Mississippi was built in Dallas and the first suburban mall was Northgate in Seattle, but you'd think Phoenix invented the infernal things. When I write "mall," I don't mean the beautiful and now dead 19th century Arcade in downtown Dayton. I mean a shopping center built around the automobile. Park Central was Phoenix's first, developed by the Burgbacher brothers on the site of a former dairy and opening in 1957. It was anchored by Diamonds, Newberry's and Goldwater's, the latter closing its downtown store two miles south and beginning the end of downtown retail. Even so, in the early- and mid-1960s, downtown held its own as the state's busiest shopping destination — but the die was cast. Most natives don't even remember when Phoenix was more than a city of malls.

I grew up within bicycle distance of Park Central (had my bike stolen there, too). It was open air (the city was not yet devastated by the heat island), convenient and wildly popular. It anchored Midtown, along with the twin towers across the street, the taller of which sported an outside glass elevator and the shorter being home to the Playboy Club. Old Park Central was semi-urban, contiguous to the city and human-scaled. It was followed by Biltmore Fashion Square, which until Westcor turned it into another lookalike suburban soul-killer, was also open air, with plenty of shade and in a pleasing scale. Across the street was the open-air Town and Country shopping center (which was not an empty name, for the city around it was still meshed with citrus groves and horse properties). Chris-Town became the first enclosed, air-conditioned mall in 1961.

By the 1960s and 1970s, Phoenix developers went on a mall binge. Among them: Thomas Mall, built in the classic enclosed configuration of a long rectangle of shops with an anchor department store at each end, and Los Arcos in Scottsdale, an L-shaped Spanish design with Sears and the Broadway. These competed with Tower Plaza, Papago Plaza and others, which were older shopping centers with the shops facing the parking lots. If you grew up in Phoenix, you didn't know any better. The mall was a magical thing: New, clean, easy, cool. In 1973, what seemed would be the granddaddy of them all was completed: Metrocenter. It broke the old two-anchor mold with five department stores, two levels and even held an ice rink. My buds and I would drive out there just to see it. But it was on the outer edge of the city. And while it was promoted as a super-regional mall that would be absorbed by future growth, it just didn't seem right. Downtown was dead. Park Central was struggling. My first stirrings of an urban sensibility were offended by Metrocenter.

Phoenix 101: The Deuce

The last time I was in Phoenix, a shuttered building just west of USAirways Center was about all that was left of the storied Deuce, the city's skid row. In its heyday, from the 1920s through the 1970s, it extended over several blocks from the Southern Pacific tracks to Van Buren, centered along Second Street. (The new bar-restaurant called The Duce, at Central and Lincoln, is not in the Deuce). It's open to debate as to whether Second Street was the origin of the name, or if it was a shortened version of the Produce District, the warehouses and loading docks clustered along the railroad tracks, including middle-of-the-street spur lines that ran along Jackson and Madison. During Prohibition, the Deuce was also known for its speakeasies. Brothels and gambling could be found along the infamous Paris Alley, off Second Street between Jefferson and Washington.

Old downtown Phoenix was remarkably compact and walkable. The main part of the central business district ran along Central and west to Seventh Avenue. East along Washington and Jefferson were a remarkable variety of stores, including Penney's and Korrick's department stores, as well as the Fox Theater, the barber college and Dr. Hugh Ilstrip's chiropractic practice. The Greyhound and Continental Trailways bus depots faced each other at First Street and Van Buren. East of Greyhound was the Arizona Republic/Phoenix Gazatte building, St. Mary's church and the church schools, and Phoenix Union High School. South of this, the Deuce. It was a dense mix of single-story business buildings and two- to five-story single-room occupancy hotels, many dating back to territorial days. One could walk into this "bad part of town" by taking a few steps east of the Fox or south of St. Mary's. The businesses there ran the gamut from bars, cafes, package-liquor shops, gospel missions and pawn shops to second-hand furniture outlets and an Army-Navy surplus store. The Matador Mexican restaurant was in the Deuce before it was relocated to its present location on Adams. A few houses survived as well. The remains of the city's Chinatown were part of the Deuce (although the Chinese, not facing the discrimination they had suffered in California, followed the Anglos out as the city sprawled). Sing High Chop Suey House, now moved a few blocks west of the Deuce, is a survivor. And then, starting at Madison, the produce operations such as Central Wholesale Terminal and United Produce.

The most famous denizen of the Deuce was Ernesto Miranda, who worked off and on at United Produce. Miranda was arrested in 1963 for kidnapping and rape, and gave a confession without being read his rights. The conviction was thrown out by the Supreme Court and police agencies were forced to routinely "Mirandize" suspects. Still, Miranda himself was convicted in a second trial, where the tainted confession was not introduced, and served time. Released in 1972, he returned to the Deuce where he sold autographed Miranda warning cards and lived in an SRO. In 1976, he was fatally knifed at La Amapola bar, which as I recall (and Cal can correct me) was around Sixth Street and Madison. By that time I was working on the ambulance, but was off-duty that night; a crew from B-Shift transported Miranda to Good Samaritan Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Four for Phoenix

In the field for Phoenix mayor, Wes Gullett must show he is more than a Republican political operative with ties to Fife Symington and John McCain, two of the more odious statewide officeholders in Arizona history. Peggy Neely seems to be the candidate of the sprawl developers and considers "standing tall against billboards" an issue of supreme importance. That leaves only two candidates worthy of serious attention: Claude Mattox and Greg Stanton.

Mattox represents Maryvale and much of west Phoenix on City Council. He has shown himself to be a man of integrity, someone who grew in office, and has represented a largely Hispanic, largely poor district well, while also understanding the importance of the Convention Center, ASU Downtown, the biosciences campus, Sheraton and light rail. He's approachable, honest and plays a mean guitar. His rugged face, like something out of a Western, and (when I knew him) sometimes casual-to-sloppy dress causes people to underestimate his intelligence and tactical skill as a politician. He claims an interesting mix of supporters, including Peggy Bilsten (who should have been mayor); Jerry Colangelo (does he care anymore since he's become a west-side sprawl developer?); Matt Salmon (?!?) and former mayor Paul Johnson. The downside? As one person close to city politics put it: "Nice guy, but where's the vision?" Indeed, the issues he's pushing are hardly inspiring: Strong neighborhoods (what does that mean, especially in a city with few real neighborhoods?); safety, and "quality schools" (out of the mayor's control). His bio also lists him as a vice president of something called National Western Vistas Real Estate, whose Web site I can't find, and could Phoenix move beyond real estate, please? Still, Phoenix could do far worse than Mattox. (Update: A reader corrects me, with the Web site here and the BBB file).

Greg Stanton is another candidate who risks being underestimated. Too polished. Too smooth. Too Mister Perfect looks. More than a touch of ambition. Very unlike Mayor Phil Gordon but still another lawyer. But beneath this and the councilman-like talk about "neighborhoods" and "safety," Stanton has an incisive intellect and a sharp understanding that, as he puts it, Phoenix is "a city at a crossroads." More than his rivals, he understands the need to make the transition into quality growth and sustainability. After representing the mostly Republican district (he's a Democrat) that includes Ahwatukee, North Central, Arcadia and Biltmore for nine years on City Council, he went to work as a deputy attorney general for Terry Goddard. Stanton was on the right side in voting against zoning east Camelback for more skyscrapers and in opposing the disastrous sprawl monster, CityNorth. Stanton would be the best choice.

The city in mind

As a native Westerner, my problem with "wide open spaces" is how many we've lost in my lifetime and how difficult it is to really live in what's left in a nation of 308 million. The constant move outward in metro Phoenix obliterates anything but the illusion. Today's wide vista out the window will be a Super Wal-Mart tomorrow. People who bought in Fountain Hills years ago — a development that annihilated one of the state's most lush saguaro forests, and it takes a saguaro ten years to grow an inch-and-a-half — are now partly surrounded by schlock. Same with Verrado, where the idiot David Brooks saw "the future." Prescott, a town with history and wonderful bones, is a planning and congestion disaster outside the old town. The same is true with Flagstaff, as with most small towns in America.

If you're rich and lucky enough to buy land adjacent to a National Park, maybe your panorama will have the illusion of the pristine, although we know the pollution, fire, sleazy land swaps and other stresses facing our public lands — and just wait for the GOP to privatize it. Move to the staked plains and you can find real emptiness, but good luck finding work. And if I want wide open spaces, do I profane them further with a new house, which by its very nature can't be "green," and total dependence on the automobile? Good luck finding a real, scalable, sustainable small town on a passenger train route.

For these reasons, as well as growing up in central Phoenix and for the eye-opening years I spent living in real cities, I choose to make my stand in the city. And it's a major focus of this blog. Most Americans don't "get" cities; they don't have urban values. Most want their imitation English country estates crowded together as lookalike tract houses in suburbia. The problems with this are manifold. First, the nation's population has doubled since Levittowns were first laid down. Thus, most suburbs suffer from urban problems without urban solutions. Second, they are artifacts of a moment in history defined by cheap gasoline, now passing away. Third, sprawl destroys vast tracts of valuable agricultural land, rural areas and wilderness, with numerous environmental strains. Fourth, for all the heavy subsidies to make suburbia work (freeways, flood control, etc.), it's a highly inefficient spatial arrangement. Suburbia is not merely boring and filled with anomie (American Beauty, etc.), it is now the epicenter of the housing crash, with attendant debt, poverty and very high carrying costs.

The Corner

In this city of loss called Phoenix, where do we even begin to mourn? The closure of the Borders store at the Biltmore gives a new generation something to miss, and a chain bookstore at that. Once the Biltmore Fashion Park was a unique shopping center of outdoor courts, shady trees, grass and low-rise, mid-century architecture. A few years ago, the odious Westcor/Macerich redid it to look like every other crapola shopping mall in suburban Phoenix. Ruined. Who cares if they decide to build a mega-mall in Goodyear — it will just be another lookalike ruin for the near future of this unsustainable place, a ruin no archeo-tourists will ever care to visit. The few who do will wonder how such a wealthy society could have squandered so many resources on such grotesquery (as they will wonder about the sprawl outside Denver, Seattle, Atlanta, etc.).

When I was growing up, the corner of McDowell and Seventh Avenue was but one of the many business districts that flourished in the area (Central was crowded with businesses from downtown to Camelback; McDowell along its length, the same with Thomas; the Gold Spot building on Roosevelt and Third Avenue was aging but busy). On the southwest corner was Val DeSpain's Chevron station and a Circle K, along with a forbidden tavern. Northwest was a gas station. The northeast corner held a distinctive, solid brick business building full of local retailers, including a barber and liquor store, then My Florist — a real flower shop — with its magical neon sign. The southeast corner was a treat: A Ryan-Evans Drug Store anchored a building with several shops, including the Best Cleaners and a Sprouse-Reitz five-and-ten store. The latter had a smashing red-tile front, while the drug store had its name proclaimed in neon. Each store in this strip had its own distinct front.

When I got back to Phoenix in 2000, most of the corner was in disrepair, the remaining buildings holding junk shops and a massively ugly Circle K box holding down the northwest side. But there seemed to be hope with David Lacy rehabbing My Florist as a restaurant. It was a huge success, a forerunner of midtown and downtown eateries to come (and go). The inside was beautifully appointed and at night the grand piano accompanied diners. It was never my florist: I found the menu unappealing, rather attuned to people who didn't really like to eat, and the servers were surly. Portland's and Cheuvront were more my style. But lots of people loved My Florist, many of whom had never even realized that the gems of the nearby historic districts existed. Is is safe to go down there?, some asked at first, living in the soulless suburbs where most of the lurid violence really takes place.

Downtown, again II

The smart folks in the comments section of Rogue Columnist did not disappoint. So in the spirit of Abe Lincoln ("It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt"), I should probably just send you to their thoughts and end the post right here.

Still, a few observations.

Let me join Soleri and others on my own SimCity dreams. Oh, to have the Westward Ho restored to its glory, as has happened in other cities around the country (such as the Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, the Skirvin in Oklahoma City or the Book Cadillac in Detroit)! To have the old Valley Bank building bustling again, with its magnificent lobby as I recall it. I'll see that and up you: A restored Union Station as an intercity and commuter train station, with intercity and city buses and a trolley to light rail. A real Symphony Hall worthy of a world-class city at Van Buren and Third, or any of the many vacant lots. Rebuilding some of the lost treasures, such as the red sandstone building that was located, as I recall, where the awful Wells Fargo (First National Bank of Arizona) tower now squats, on other empty land. Rebuild the Fox Theater, too. Somewhere architects must exist who would do something so subversive as to design pleasing, classical buildings.

For those wishing something to feel good about: Light rail, ASU Downtown, CityScape, the Phoenix Convention Center, Herberger Theater Center, Sheraton, Phoenix Biosciences Campus, Dodge Theater, Children's Museum, park of the Floating Diaphragm, USAirways Arena, Chase Field and the shady, grassy oasis of Arizona Center. These are all real accomplishments, major assets upon which other civic goods can grow.

Downtown, again

Susan Copeland, chair of the Downtown Voices Coalition, recently wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, entitled, "A realistic downtown assessment." It was mostly a clear-eyed look at the reality of downtown Phoenix's challenges: Expecting too much from sports teams, failure to integrate ASU into the city fabric, too many surface parking lots and chimerical hopes from an "entertainment district." Copeland rightly adds that CityScape is "suburban mall stylistically dating to the 20th century," although I have a hard time mourning the brutalist "park" of Patriot's Square. She adds:

With all the damage done, there are still hopeful signs, if only our city officials and civic leaders follow their own community vetted and charetted ideals. The Urban Form Project; Arts, Culture, and Small Business District Overlay; and Adaptive Reuse Program are smarter moves for aspiring urban infill than another stab at a faux urban Entertainment District. When the city actually listens to its citizens rather than check-marking the input box, great things happen, like the improved ASU Nursing School exterior or the forthcoming Washington Street Centennial Project.

Well, fine (Her piece was written in response to this one). And good on her for searching for realism. But regular readers will have to forgive me if I cover some familiar ground as well as discuss the deep problems and real opportunities facing downtown Phoenix. I'm still not sure people fully get it.

The sweet season

I am back from several days in Arizona for book signings. I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that certain things still pull on me: A spectacular sunset over the Estrellas, a scent of blooms in the air, riding light rail (we built it, you bastards), friends who remained so even after I was kicked out of my columnist gig, and the comforting embrace of the old neighborhood. It's high season for the resorts and I suppose Scottsdale is full of golfers, but that's not the side of the street where I work. Phoenix will always be a home of my heart, but so much of that exists in what's gone. Most of the 4 million people living there have no inkling of this irretrievable loss. Yes, every city changes. But Phoenix threw away so much of what made it unique in all the world, gaining nothing but more people and a questionable future.

Economic depression hangs on the place even during the diminishing number of pleasant months. I read that Don Cardon, head of the governor's new "commerce authority," wants to put together a fund amounting to $500 million to $1 billion to provide loans to companies that will grow in Arizona. This, according to the new story, "at no risk to the state." Good luck with that. The state fumbled its best opportunity to leapfrog by failing to implement the "meds-and-eds" strategy during the 2000s. Now the Legislature plans to further gut funding to universities, the engines of an advanced economy — this has been going on for decades. The state's inward-looking, hostile-to-the-world intolerance and political extremism are kryptonite to attracting talented people. Plainly, Arizona doesn't intend to compete in a knowledge-driven global economy. If there's a strategy, it seems to be the same old routine of economic-development organizations appearing to be busy.

At one book signing, a man asked why people move to Phoenix, given all its downsides. Not in a hostile way, but out of sincere curiosity.  A longtime resident, he noted all the ways the metro area's quality of life has declined, not least the hotter and longer summers. How Phoenix has its own version of horrible weather, only in reverse from Minneapolis. My no-doubt inadequate answer: Sunshine, which for many people is enough; a huge supply of relatively cheap housing; the jobs that for decades went along with rapidly rising population, especially in construction and real estate, and massive federal subsidies. This goes well beyond the Salt River Project, CAP, flood control that made it possible to build tract houses on otherwise marginal desert land, etc. Social Security and Medicare, for example, underwrite a huge retiree population along with thousands of jobs in health care. At least somebody is wondering.

Phoenix 101: Encanto Park

A city such as Cincinnati built great parks, from the showpiece Eden Park, home to the Cincinnati Playhouse, Cincinnati Art Museum, Kron Conservatory and Mirror Lake Fountain, to the exquisitely designed Ault Park near the tony Mount Lookout and Hyde Park neighborhoods. Eastsiders who won't venture beyond the "Sauerkraut Curtain" may not even know about Mt. Echo Park, one of my favorites with its awesome views. The Queen City of the West had the good fortune to come of age in the golden age of park design and have the wealth to pull it off. Phoenix, a modest farm town at this time, built only one: Encanto. That makes it all the more a civic treasure. This Saturday Encanto Park will celebrate its 75th anniversary.

I write this not to take away from the city's achievement with desert parks, especially South Mountain Park and Papago Park. But they are what they are, often stunning preserves of the Sonoran Desert for hardy hikers and, more often, drivers. Encanto was different, built as an oasis of shade and grass and City Beautiful Movement design, meant for people, picnics and strolling. Now more than ever, you can feel the instant cooling of the park and golf courses when you drive south of Thomas on 15th Avenue on a summer night. It's not like the Midwest — for that kind of lush greenery, look to Cincinnati. It lacks the size and resources that Los Angeles could put into Griffith Park. Encanto is its own enchanted feat, a capsule of old Phoenix, a magical refutation of those who say "Phoenix has no soul."

Tom and Mike

When Michael Ratner passed away this week, Phoenix lost one of its true heroes. He bought the revived Tom's Tavern downtown in 1992 and never stopped fighting to keep this landmark going. Tom's played a big part in my personal history: It's a setting in many of the David Mapstone books, and Mike played host to the launch party of my first mystery, Concrete Desert. For years, he had my books for sale at the tavern. On our columnist lunches, E. J. Montini, Richard Ruelas and I sometimes went to Tom's. Tippling happened.

Tom's was one of my hangouts, and Mike always wanted to know how I was doing, even when I paid visits after being thrown out of Phoenix. He was that kind of man, caring about others, not one to dwell on his battle with cancer. He'd sit me at the "governor's table" or the "mayor's table," then join me to talk. Mike was a worrier. Tom's always seemed on the edge, even with its history and location at the foot of the Renaissance Towers close to city and county government. He hung on through light rail construction, creating events for symphony and other event-goers. The Great Recession was another storm to weather.  He lovingly preserved history, from the portraits of past and current leaders to mementos of the tavern's rich past, in a town that has no use for it.

He transcended the era of John Teets, Jerry Colangelo and other bigs who had the vision and means to work for a great city. In his modest way, he was one of the last stewards standing. A great restaurant operator, he could have made big money in Scottsdale or the other 'burbs. He chose to make his stand in the heart of the city.

Kenilworth at 90

I was asked to speak at the 90th birthday of Kenilworth School, my alma mater, on Oct. 23rd. Obligations keep me from attending, but this is what I would say:

Ten years ago I had the great fortune of speaking at the 80th birthday of Kenilworth School. I had come a long way from a child for whom this school held so many good memories, but also one for whom it held anxieties and fears, an average student except in reading, one who was poor in athletics, a target of bullies, who watched the clock on the wall in every classroom waiting for each school day to end, who quailed in terror when we were herded into the auditorium and made to lean against the walls and cover our heads as protection against Soviet missiles.

Ten years ago I had returned to a Phoenix spread across 1,500 square miles. A huge freeway cut its way beside Kenilworth. "Master planned communities" were where many people chose to live, even as they complained that Phoenix had no soul and no history. Natives were hard to find among the huge Midwestern influx. The temperature had risen 10 degrees and the summers were hotter and longer. Downtown and north Central had been denuded of retail and jobs. And yet Kenilworth School still stood. My message then was how Kenilworth and everyone who loved it — lawyer Fred Rosenfeld and other alums maintained an association to help the school — had kept faith. Here was Phoenix's soul and history.

Phoenix 101: Growing up

I grew up in a small town. Its name was Phoenix, and even though it had 439,170 people by the time I was four years old, in 1960, it still seemed like a place I could wrap my arms around and carry with me, just like the little towns in the movies. We lived near Cypress Street and Third Avenue, about a mile from the border of downtown. The houses faced the street, many had porches, the lawns were lush, the shade inviting.

My friends and I stashed fallen oranges and rolled them out into the rush-hour traffic on Third and Fifth — back then, before the Willo Soviet tried to wall off this neighborhood, these streets had three lanes each and carried substantial traffic twice a day, people going to and from work downtown. The oranges were also useful in friendly alley fights; more serious conflict escalated from dirt clods to rocks. Oh, we also ate them, because everyone had citrus trees in their yards and it was a quick drive out to the groves, where boxes of oranges could be purchased at roadside stands surrounded by the lavish bounty of the Salt River Valley. Some days we lay under the trees at Paperboys' Island, a pocket park at Third and Holly, and just stared into the cobalt sky, dreaming the dreams of young boys.

By the time I was eight, I was mobile and free, within limits. Specifically, I could ride my bike from Thomas to Roosevelt and Third Street to Fifteenth Avenue. It was an amazing landscape for a child. The library, art museum and Heard Museum were there. Soda fountains proliferated at drug stores, from the Rexall on Roosevelt and Third Avenue to Ryan-Evans at Seventh and McDowell to shops on Central. Every gas station had a drinking fountain with cold water, an essential for young desert rats. The firefighters at the old Station 4 on First Street and Moreland, as well as the Encanto/Seventh Ave. station indulged us. We bugged the people at Channel 12 and Channel 5 (Wallace & Ladmo's home!) for old reels of commercials — the apex of our ubiquitous trash picking. Encanto Park was a favorite hangout; it was where I decided I wasn't cut out to be a fisherman, but that didn't stop me from endless fishing journeys to the lagoons. The lovely moderne Palms Theater at Central and Virginia offered movies if we didn't want to hitch a ride downtown.

This part of the city was dense then with businesses. This was long before entire blocks were bulldozed or turned into dead space by parking garages. The buildings on the northeast and southeast corners of Seventh Avenue and McDowell, for example, were chock-full of small businesses. So was today's mostly empty Gold Spot — I got my hair cut there by Otis Kenilworth. Downtown was still the busiest shopping district in the state, followed by Park Central mall — both bracketing our neighborhood. I wasn't as fortunate as someone born a few years younger to sample the old city, but it was still pretty intact in the early and mid-1960s. The big Valley Bank sign turned atop the art deco tower and other neon signaled downtown. Among the downtown landmarks was the Hotel Westward Ho, with its famed Thunderbird Room, where presidents stayed well into the 1960s. The skyscrapers going up along Central seemed signs of progress, not incoherent planning. I watched so many of them being built. My grandmother and I took the bus to shop downtown or at Park Central. This daughter of the frontier "traded," as she put it, at the small A.J. Bayless store at Central and Moreland. Just west were the shady median parks along Moreland and Portland, two of the few City Beautiful Movement touches Phoenix received. The parkways were lined by lushly landscaped apartment buildings. Every day, we drove downtown at 5 p.m. to pick up my mother at the Greater Arizona Savings Building, where the Interstate Stream Commission had its offices. It was amazing to see the crowds on the streets, just like a big city.

The CityScape Gamble

CityScape. For most cities of its size, this downtown development would be considered modest, especially with its first phase, which will apparently comprise a 27-story office tower and a retail arcade. For Phoenix, it's a big deal, especially for downtown and the central city. It could provide some answers as to "what next?" in the nation's fifth (for now) most populous city. Unfortunately the odds are long.

When the project was first hyped in the mid-2000s, it was supposed to be a game-changer, with iconic, soaring towers that included offices, hotel and 1,000 condo units. It took over the dismal Patriot's Square, which had been created by tearing down a block of historic, irreplaceable buildings, as well as adjoining vacant lots, which also once held viable commercial structures. Yet when the real renderings came out, the buildings looked very conventional and short (yeah, yeah, FAA...ask San Diego, Boston, etc.). The retail was inward-facing, risking another Arizona Center mistake. When the economy collapsed, even these modest plans were heavily cut back. An anchor tenant, Wachovia, died in the merger with Wells Fargo. The lack of inspiring architecture, a lively streetscape and pleasing spaces is no small thing.

This is a bad time to be bringing new office and retail space on the market, whether you're in thriving downtown Seattle or in a Phoenix which has faced special, self-inflicted wounds to its old core. The commercial real-estate bubble remains a danger. Still, RED Development has stuck with the more modest first phase and continues to roll out announcements of new restaurants, a comedy club and, importantly, a pharmacy. On the other hand, Eddie Basha, in bankruptcy reorganization, couldn't fulfill his desire to locate a grocery there,

Downtown Phoenix 2.0?

It's surprising that some appear so sanguine about the likely foreclosure of most units at the 44 Monroe condo tower. This, along with a similar fate for the Summit at Copper Square and 44's developer Grace Communities failing to rehab the historic Valley National Bank building because of the Mortgages Ltd. fiasco, represents a devastating setback for luring private investment into downtown Phoenix. Maybe people are too shell shocked to take it all in. Maybe they're willing to settle for things being better than they were 20 years ago, which is undeniably true. Neither option is wise for those who wish the central city well.

Make no mistake: the Phoenix depression is metro-wide. I saw rotting framing and miles of distressed subdivisions out in the exurbs. Tempe foolishly threw away its opportunity to build a mid-rise boutique downtown of national quality -- now it has an empty condo high-rise and Mill Avenue is swooning again. But my conviction remains that there is no healthy major city without a strong urban downtown, and center city problems left unchecked have a habit of spreading. (And don't be taken in by the propaganda: Phoenix did have a vibrant downtown -- it was killed by civic malpractice).

In Phoenix, the past few years have seen some notable triumphs: the beginnings of a downtown ASU campus, light rail, a convention center worthy of such a tourist-dependent city, a new convention hotel, and a blossoming of independently owned restaurants. The biosciences campus has been planted (although it has been allowed to stall and, I fear, its future is uncertain). Yet major private investment has not followed; 44 Monroe and the Summit represented the strongest chance for that within the existing local business model of "real estate first." The many towers proposed for the entire Central Corridor are now blighted empty lots. CityScape? I'll believe it when I see it. What I see is a homely suburban design, not the soaring "game changer" sold to the public on the front page of the newspaper.

Phoenix 101: Union Station

When Jefferson Davis -- yes, that Jeff Davis -- led the pre-Civil War survey for a southern route of the transcontinental railroad, Phoenix didn't exist. The Salt River Valley still lay in its centuries of enchanted slumber surrounded by wilderness. So the line was set in an arc north and west out of Tucson toward California. This necessitated the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico -- otherwise, today's border would be at the Gila River. But it meant that what became the nation's fifth most populous city would end up without a mainline railroad. Even when the Southern Pacific was built across Arizona in the 1880s, Phoenix was a mere hamlet. It was served by a spur from Maricopa.

By 1910, Phoenix had more than 11,000 people and was fast overtaking Tucson as the territory's largest town -- and with the Salt River harnessed by Roosevelt Dam it would become the center of huge agricultural production. The SP remedied this by building a northern main line up from Picacho Junction through Phoenix and west to where it joined the southern main just east of Yuma. It was a matter of competitive urgency, because the rival Santa Fe railroad had built a line to Phoenix (the Peavine) from its northern Arizona main at Ash Fork. The SP's line was opened in 1926 and waiting for it was the grandest building in this city of 48,000: the lovely mission-revival style Union Station.

It's still there, at 4th Avenue and Harrison Street, the best human-made reminder I know of that Phoenix indeed has history and soul. Because of terrible short-sightedness of state leaders, it hasn't been served by Amtrak trains since the 1990s. It holds telecommunications equipment for Sprint, at once a horrid missed opportunity to create something great downtown yet it also probably the only reason it hasn't been torn down for something today's Phoenicians would consider majestic, such as a jail parking lot. I was fortunate enough to see it at the end of its glory days.

Phoenix 101: The old city

If I sometimes seem to have a chip on my shoulder, it's true. I carry a memory of old Phoenix -- and feel its loss profoundly -- in a way that's probably unusual even for natives of my generation. It's not nostalgia; I know too much about the place for that. It's a more complex reaction, to history thrown aside, opportunities lost and the destruction of a very flawed paradise, but a paradise nonetheless.

It was not really captured in the Channel 8 documentaries on Phoenix in the 1950s and 1960s. As popular as those shows were, they were a classic example of telling history through the lens of the present. Hence, we saw much about sprawl (the start of Maryvale and Sun City) and Sky Harbor. They missed so, so much. What they missed are the things I describe in talks when I say, "If you arrived in Phoenix after 1970, I feel sorry for you."

I was fortunate to grow up in central Phoenix in the late 1950s and 1960s, fortunate, too, to be the offspring of a mother and grandmother who were Arizonans with history in their bones. We lived in a house built in 1928, in an old neighborhood close to downtown. I attended the same grade school as Barry Goldwater, Paul Fannin and Phoenix Mayor Margaret Hance. It was different from growing up in suburbia.