Eleven miles of Power Road will get an image boost later this year as Mesa looks to better promote a corridor of higher education, research and aerospace.
The city aims to create a brand for what it dubs the Power Knowledge Corridor, an area poised for economic development in Mesa and east Gilbert.
Mesa Mayor Scott Smith said the city will replace street signs this year in what is the first step in establishing an identity.
“Branding is important,” Smith said. “It’s really the first step in getting people to think differently about an area, to focus on an area and to really differentiate that area from other areas.”
Mesa took the same approach in the Fiesta District this year, replacing street signs along Southern Avenue from east of Alma School Road to the border with Tempe. The aim is different there, as the rebranding is the first step in revitalizing an aging part of Mesa.
Along the Power corridor, Mesa wants to expand the number and types of high-tech businesses that pay good wages and bolster economic development.
The corridor will stretch 6 miles, from Greenfield to Ellsworth roads, Smith said. The city will share sign designs with the public in a few months and install them along with a street-widening project later this year on Power from the Santan Freeway stretch of Loop 202 to south of Pecos Road.
Vice Mayor Scott Somers represents southeast Mesa and said the area needs more promotion. He pointed to a study released this month showing the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport’s economic impact totaled $685 million last year, up 121 percent from two years earlier. Somers called the growth “jaw-dropping” and said Mesa has to do more to build on its assets.
“Many people do not realize what we have and the importance of that area toward economic development,” Somers said.
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Contact writer: (480) 898-6548 or ggroff@evtrib.com
Freethinker posted at 11:32 am on Sat, Jan 29, 2011.
So the Tempe/Mesa border got an "image boost", and now the Mesa/Apache Junction border is getting one, too.
When does MESA get one?
And how much have the Mesa taxpayers shelled out for these boondoggles?
samkat posted at 3:33 pm on Sat, Jan 29, 2011.
I think Smith needs to do something more and changing road signs. The entire area around ASU East looks old. Nothing has really changed since the base was closed.
snipes posted at 9:06 am on Sun, Jan 30, 2011.
Another of Mayor Smith's wet dreams.
Certainly the new signage was *just* what the Fiesta District needed.
Fiesta is now vibrant and robust, and the city coffers are just overflowing with tax receipts flooding in from the area.
OR
Fiesta remains a decrepit pig-sty largely due to the City's incompetent staff's failure to enforce even the most basic of our Code Compliance rules. And this comes *after* the city squandered a quarter-million-dollars on some fly-by-night re-development scheme.