Tempe’s leaders have decided that to get more projects built downtown and at Tempe Town Lake, they need say “No” to developers more often.
It’s hard to imagine a more radical departure from how the city operated during the heady days of the real estate boom in 2007.
At the time, leaders approved developments fast and furious – saying yes to four projects containing more than 3 million square feet of new buildings on one unusually busy day.
City officials acknowledge they approved some condo, office and hotel projects that they knew would never be built. They figured at least some things would materialize.
But perhaps just 25 percent of what Tempe said yes to during the boom came to fruition, said Chris Anaradian, Tempe’s community development director.
The city inadvertently sent the message to developers that Tempe didn’t have a clear vision by approving so many things, he said. And the staff was so overwhelmed reviewing proposals that they couldn’t advise the City Council which developments were or were not likely. Anaradian recently told the City Council that developers don’t want the city to be so accommodating to so many proposals.
“If I go out there now and do this same thing, it hurts our credibility a little bit,” Anaradian said.
Mayor Hugh Hallman said it’s more than credibility at stake. It becomes impossible to do deals, he said, when the city isn’t more selective in what it wants and doesn’t clearly lay out its vision.
He noted more than a dozen hotel developers were scouting locations downtown a few years ago though the market would likely support perhaps two to four of them.
“When you have 15 people running around claiming they’re doing a hotel deal, you can’t tell which ones are real and which ones are phony,” Hallman said. “It drives the real players out of the market, because now the financing markets can’t tell the difference either. And everybody knows 15 hotels don’t make any sense, so it scares a lot of money out of the market.”
To avoid the same pitfalls, Tempe will review its downtown and lake-area plans to determine the likely demand for hotels, offices, residential, retail and recreational uses. The city will also review 25 years’ worth of numerous consultant recommendations, public meetings and conceptual plans for what Tempe wants.
Developers want a more specific definition of the city’s vision, Anaradian said, adding it’s difficult to sum that up now given how far back the studies go and how much the market has changed in the last few years. An updated plan will help the city decide which developers and plans are realistic and worth pursuing, he said.
“It doesn’t mean we can’t dream or have visions or go after big things, but there has to be some sense of what’s reasonable,” Anaradian said.
Hallman said he’d like the city to put that together in about six months. Councilwoman Onnie Shekerjian said she suspects the City Council is mostly in agreement as what should happen.
“I actually think we have a shared concept,” she said. “It just hasn’t been articulated in a document.”
The Downtown Tempe Community welcomes the study because the results can guide business recruitment, DTC President Nancy Hormann said.
“This whole thing is very exciting to me,” he said.
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Contact writer: (480) 898-6548 or ggroff@evtrib.com
bsintempe posted at 11:01 am on Fri, Feb 11, 2011.
I am happy that the City is rethinking their policies around development. Better late than never, I guess. Yet, one can't help being a bit frustrated, given the high numbers of Tempe residents who warned city officials back in the 90s that the downtown could not support the growth they were planning. I have a clear memory of Mr. Fackler telling use that we could not stop the kind of development they had planned, since it was the "market" driving it all. Even at the time this seemed ridiculous, though the City was clearly under the magical spell of development money. I can't help but wonder what might have happened to downtown Tempe if the City had followed more reasonable growth policies, ones based on sustainable growth, human scale, and environmental thinking. You know, the type of things that local residents requested in a plan they submitted to the City. Given that Mayor Hallman is going to revisit 25 years of policies and recommendations, perhaps there is a slight hope that this community-based plan and policies might yet revive. If anybody in the city is interested, let me know since I am sure I can dig up the community plan somewhere.
Command-Z posted at 9:40 am on Fri, Feb 11, 2011.
The story of Tempe's modern development is one of missed opportunities that actually goes back to the days when Harry Mitchell was mayor. His efforts to get rid of the blight that was rampant Downtown resulted in the destruction of Tempe's oldest neighborhood. Yes, the hippies and bikers were kicked out, some of the old houses were preserved and moved, but the old neighborhood was destroyed and replaced with parking garages and ugly office buildings. Thus, throughout the '90s and into the '00s, developers, many from out-of-state, reigned supreme as Tempe's leaders approved any glass-and-steel monstrosity that came along... completely disrupting the natural evolution that would have created a unified, unique downtown neighborhood of locally-owned small businesses... instead creating a patchwork of concrete pads and sterile office spaces resembling the finest Soviet-style architecture..
What could have been, had our city planners actually had a vision for a neighborhood, rather than a lust for rising property values and tax revenues? Town Lake could have maybe been a waterfront experience like San Antonio's Riverwalk, with shops and restaurants that interface with the river, rather than just overlook it with the sole purpose of making the rent higher. Town Lake Park itself could have been what was originally promised, a restored wetland park with tree-lined paths and riparian habitats instead of a shadeless cement pond with exploding rubber dams. Mill Avenue could have been what it was already becoming on its own... small, locally-owned businesses serving the needs of the local community, rather than the failed model of a corporate open-air shopping mall with high-rises to house urban hipsters who would rather spend their money in Scottsdale anyway.
Now, vacant lots stand to mark the spots where small businesses once stood. Gentle Strength Co-op, Long Wong's... we even had a grocery store. All gone to make room for a failed vision of a forced, postmodern "coolness" to attract young urban socialites longing for the high-end loft lifestyle of a bigger city, all while slowly displacing the NEIGHBORHOODS that already existed here.
The past decades have seen the residents of these neighborhoods... Maple-Ash especially, watch in fear as the greedy dreadnought of development slashes and burns its way toward its tree-lined streets and beautiful old homes sitting on big, tree-shaded grassy lots. Tempe's leaders failed when given the opportunity to preserve Maple-Ash with an historic overlay, choosing to side, once again, with the developers and speculators with high-density aspirations.... speculators who actually argued that historic designation would decrease property values!
Today, The Centerpoint towers, blocking my view of Tempe Butte from my front yard, stand dark, yet tall, as a monument to missed opportunity.
Rich posted at 7:48 pm on Tue, Feb 1, 2011.
With one of the world's largest Universities and a yearly renewable rental market, these morons killed the market in a 50% rental town. Instead of leading a recovery they've already dug a hole with vacancies all along Apache. Tempe is land locked, if they had learned to say 'no' a few years ago, we'd be recovering, not sinking deeper. They just had to 'regulate' rentals, tax second homes and kill the goose laid the golden egg. This is way too little, way, way too late.