[Source: City of Phoenix] — The first of three stakeholders meetings to discuss the 1st Street Pedestrian Improvements project will be held on Wednesday, February 3 at 4 p.m. at the Irish Cultural Center, 1106 N. Central Ave. (close to Roosevelt Station light rail). Interested persons are encouraged to voice their opinion to the pedestrian improvements plan for 1st Street between Van Buren and Moreland Streets. For more information, contact Gail Brinkmann, City of Phoenix Street Transporation Department, at 602-495-2073.
Downtown Voices Coalition 
1) Make First/Third Fridays EVERY Friday – place booths along 1st Street between Hance Park and Fillmore. This would enable businesses in the area to go from “Feast or Famine” to “Feast” every weekend. Allow 2-3 stage areas for bands/performances.
2) Make the Downtown Farmer’s Market run Saturdays AND Sundays, again along 1st Street from Hance Park and Fillmore. Again, would space the booths further apart. The current Farmer’s Market is over-crowded and vendors aren’t able to capture the attention of people walking by when there’s another booth immediately adjacent, which in queueology has shown to have a negative effect on purchasing. Retain the stage spaces for performances, music, demonstrations, etc.
3) Saturday nights could then also have a “Saturday Fringe Festival” or something of the sort – bring in the eccentric artists and performers and bands for Saturday nights.
4) If necessary, break everything down each Sunday night, to be set up again on Fridays… otherwise, make the booth spaces more permanent, like you would find in any other city – Paris, Barcelona, New York, San Francisco, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, San Jose, Mexico City, etc. that have more frequent and permanent street market areas.
5) This is an easy and simple set up – and for one of the least-used streets in downtown Phoenix that also helps to link sports venues to the Convention Center to Cymphony Hall to the Herberger Theater Center to Arizona Center to ASU to the Civic Space Park to Hance Park to the Library to the Art Museum and Heard Museum, this is the largest/longest gap of nothingness that needs to be filled with activity.
6) The work necessary to get this done should take all of one week… barricade 1st Street at Fillmore and each East-West street until you get to Roosevelt. Roosevelt and Fillmore would continue to allow cross traffic for vehicles, and the work would be done. San Francisco set up a similar, albeit smaller, concept near Market and Castro streets in less than one day, including painting the asphalt and putting in seating, planters, and barricades – all of which they found in their salvage yard!
tell you what, you buy me out of my place at 1st & Pierce and then you can do this :) But until then, let’s not take it beyond Pierce.