Downtown Tucsonan - November 2008 - (Page 4)

by Lee Allen & Downtown Tucsonan Staff D ow n tow n A n t h o n y Va c c a r o ’s B r o o k l y n P i z z a C o m p a n y, o n 4 t h Av e n u e s i n c e 1 9 9 6 , h a s b e c o m e Tu c s o n ’s f i r s t r e s t a u r a n t t o i n v e s t i n s o l a r p o w e r. AN OPTIMISTIC REALIST Brought to town in February as an “interim CEO” on a one year contract, the Downtown Tucson Partnership has issued a vote of confidence and moved early to name Glenn Lyons its permanent CEO. “We have to find new ways of doing things,” he says. “Downtown has to be an on-going construction site in order to represent tangible progress because re-building a downtown never stops. Rio Nuevo money has helped us kick start some things and hopefully private sector investment will follow. When the 4th Avenue underpass is finished, the streetcar is running, and I-10 is back to normal, we’ll have a lot more to offer than we have today.” Between now and year-end, two of the bigger items on his docket involve parking and a new downtown event. DTP and the City of Tucson are in discussion to transfer management of the ParkWise division to the public-private organization. “One of the reasons they haven’t been able to make money out of it is they haven’t been able to challenge the current format and go to market-based pricing. They’ve been told to pay for the TICET shuttle service (half a million dollars a year) and the debt service on the Pennington Street parking garage. When you add those together, it’s a $1¼ million annual loss. I expect in today’s economy, TICET will go away because it can’t sustain itself but that’s up to the City Manager,” Lyons says. City Manager Mike Hein is on record as indicating some short-term inconvenience may be necessary to earn long-term prosperity. Details of the new downtown event will be unveiled soon. It’s a New Year’s party called First Night, an alcohol-free family arts festival already in place in 100 other cities in North America. “This will be our first year, a small festival from 4pm-midnight with both free entertainment and paid programming, performances of some kind every hour until midnight. Next year we hope to get a sponsor and be able to present fireworks to cap off New Year’s Eve. Hopefully the pilot project we’ll do this year will introduce the concept and attract corporate sponsors for the next time.” Also on his To-Do list is a make-over for the Walgreen’s building, a façade facial as it were. “Poster Frost Associates has been chosen to begin design work immediately on the $800,000 endeavor with bids expected to be let in 6-8 months,” says Tucson Facilities Management Department Director Reid Spaulding. “The process will be phased with some initial limited demolition of the existing overlaid façade to confirm what actually remains.” “Initially we were going to sell Walgreen’s like we did the MacArthur Building, but the MacArthur building façade is in good condition while Walgreen’s exterior is in bad shape,” Lyons says. “So we delayed the sale of the building to do second floor façade renovation, lower the risk of a cost overrun on total renovation needs, buy some time in a down market, and make the building more salable for future consideration.” Now that Phase I designs in the $37 million project are nearly finished, actual construction of Scott Avenue improvements should get underway in December with May 2009 as a completion date. “Scott is a wide rightof-way, so the basic model has 8’ of landscaping adjacent to property, an 8’ colored concrete sidewalk, and another 8’ of landscaping adjacent to the curb with two lanes of traffic,” Lyons says. “It’s designed as a nice walk from south of Broadway through the arts district leading to the Temple of Music and Art.” Phase II involves Congress and a bit of work on Broadway and Granada. “Congress will be where most of our commerce is, where the streetcar stops, and where pedestrian volume will be at its highest.” Two other items in progress involve Rio Nuevo bonds and plans for Presidio Terrace Request for Proposals. “We went to the Rio Nuevo subcommittee asking permission to begin the RFP process knowing full well the slower we went in today’s economic environment, the better off we’d be,” Lyons says. “We’ve got time to work out remaining problems because of costs in the real estate market as well as the credit market.” In relation to Rio Nuevo bond ratings “If we get a good rating, I imagine the bonds will go on the market, but since the credit situation is changing almost daily, that might take longer and might also affect the rating itself. Given Wall Street actions of late, we’ll just have to wait and see.” Sometime this month, City Councilman Rodney Glassman hopes to announce initial coordination of plans to offer family fun events downtown each weekend. Glassman is working with the Downtown Tucson Partnership and some 60 other organizations to enumerate, categorize, schedule and promote family-friendly events every Saturday from 11am-3pm. Once a master calendar is developed and an information network is developed to get the word out to parents with young children, family friendly Saturday events could begin in early 2009 with at least one major venue available every weekend. GENIUS AWARDS Get out your 2009 calendar and mark March 28th for the 1st annual MOCA Local Genius Award Gala honoring contributions of Tucson visionaries to the economic, cultural, and social well-being of Tucson and the world. Designed as a cause for celebration of the rich intellectual diversity of the region, the Local Genius Award publicity recognizes the often unsung value of locally-based creativity. In this case: Optical scientist and space explorer Peter Smith; author Byrd Baylor; poet Sherwin Bitsui; painter Robert Colescott; musician Howe Gelb, and culinary mastermind Suzana Davila. Gala tickets are on sale now ($150 before December 1, $175 after that date) from MOCA, 191 E. Toole Avenue, 624 6873, www.localgenius.org. KXCI’s Ernesto Portillo Jr. will emcee the formal event, a multi-course dinner, silent auction, live music and dancing, to be held on the penthouse floor of the Pennington Garage. ANOTHER GENIUS Architect Rob Paulus, brainchild of Ice House Lofts, Barrio Metalico, and indigoMODERN needs to design a larger trophy case. Paulus has been awarded the prestigious SRP Sustainable Award from the American Institute of Architects (Arizona Design) recognizing achievement in sustainable design through innovation and efficiency. “Our firm is honored to be recognized and I’m proud our sustainable approach was implemented in a private residential development where I’m part of the development team,” Paulus said. STILL MORE IN THE GENIUS CATEGORY The annual Wells Fargo Copper Cactus Awards, Southern Arizona’s oldest small-business recognition event, this year brought spotlight recognition to nine companies (selected out of more than 500 nominated). Film Creations Ltd. received accolades for Community Service in the small company category. Also honored in the Downtown area by the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce as Small Business Leader of the Year was Todd Hanley of Hotel Congress. 4 downtown tucsonan.november.08 http://www.localgenius.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Downtown Tucsonan - November 2008

Downtown Tucsonan - November 2008 Contents Downtown Lowdown Vital Signs Downtown Live Arts Galleries Performing Arts Events Film Historic Downtown Museums Billboard Classifieds

Downtown Tucsonan - November 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.