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Phoenix debates land use near light-rail stations
The City of Phoenix is holding a forum to get citizen input on land use planning near light rail stations. For the Camelback/Central Ave light rail station, the forum is being held at the Days Inn at 502 W Camelback Rd on Thursday at 6:30pm.
State law requires cities, towns, and counties to update their general plan every 10 years and this is the first revision of Phoenix’s general plan after the development of METRO light rail.
Phoenix is amending the city’s general plan for land-use planning near light-rail stations and is asking residents for input.
A public meeting to discuss the station at Central Avenue and Camelback Road is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Days Inn, 502 W. Camelback Road.
The general plan is a blueprint that outlines land-use and policy guidelines on how the city should grow and redevelop for decades into the future.
State law requires cities, towns and counties to update the plan every 10 years but legislation the state passed last year extended the deadline to 2015 to give budget-constricted local governments short on planning staff more time to update their general plans.
Attendees will discuss a general range of appropriate building heights for future real-estate redevelopment.
By having stakeholders identify what they want to preserve, promote and will accept in advance, the general plan can better guide future real-estate development.
The meetings are not about property ownership, existing zoning or uses, city officials have said.
Properties along the light-rail route are in a transit-overlay district, which means less space is dedicated for parking due to the proximity to the train.
Read more here.
If you go, the nearest light rail station is 7th Ave/Camelback Road (Melrose District). For more information, call 602.256.5648.
Anti-SB1070 billboard added near downtown Phoenix
[Source: Michael Ferraresi on Azcentral’s PhxBeat Blog]
The billboard at Camelback Road and Third Street gets right to the point with a racial-profiling message.
Latino-rights leaders at Brave New Foundation paid for the outdoor advertisement through donations to the Facebook page of Cuentame—an online immigration forum organized by Brave New Foundation, which has fostered anti-SB1070 conversation.
The Phoenix billboard cautions, “Have your papers ready — Racial profiling just ahead.”
It should be visible to the public for the next few weeks, according to Brave New Foundation communications director Martha de Hoyos. The organization selected the intersection to target tourists, in addition to locals, she said.
Cuentame members selected the slogan over two other options based on an online vote, De Hoyos said.
Earlier this year, Brave New Foundation—based in Culver City, Calif.—posted a three-minute Facebook video interview with a Phoenix police officer who admitted that SB1070 would make him feel like a Nazi enforcer on the streets.
Officer Paul Dobson was placed under internal investigationafter the video helped draw added attention to the website. He is expected to face some type of minor discipline, such as a verbal reprimand, according to Phoenix police.
Viewpoint: Does downtown Phoenix not want business?
[Source: Life in Downtown Phoenix blog] — If downtown Phoenix is to emerge as a premier national downtown, it needs to do things better than other places. And if Fiancee-of-Downtown-resident and my experience is any indication, downtown still has a ways to go in some respects.
Fiancee-of-Downtown-resident and I are smack dab in the middle of wedding planning (which also helps explain the lack of attention I’ve given the blog). Being downtown boosters and all, we really liked the idea of having our reception somewhere around downtown. We contacted two city-run downtown facilities, both of which advertise in wedding publications as sites to hold receptions. We absolutely loved one of them, an historic building that could have been the site for a unique and unforgettable wedding reception and possibly ceremony. We toured the place, met with the relevant city representatives, and were probably going to book the event until… they stopped calling us back.
Seriously? In this economy? A city starving for revenue is too busy to call a customer back? (A customer willing to spend several thousand dollars, no less.)
Our experience at the other downtown facility was not much different. We called the wedding coordinator there and this time we did receive a response… about eight weeks later. By that time we had already moved on to plan B. We love the spot we picked in the Camelback Corridor, but it’s tough thinking about what could have been downtown
Infrastructure not keeping up with growth, Phoenix officials say
[Source: “Should you pay more to fix Valley’s pipe problems?,” Christina Boomer, Channel 15 News] — There has been a record-setting submission of development proposals to the City of Phoenix to build in and around Downtown. Developers are targeting older, single-family neighborhoods. Assistant Director of Phoenix’s Water Services, Ray Quay, says, “There’s a lot of excitement and people very interested in the urban life. So we’re seeing a lot more development proposals in the inner city area, the more urbanized portions of the city.”
Quay adds what he thinks is fueling the building craze in those areas, “We’ve heard about the Generation X wanting the urban life. Phoenix is changing; it’s maturing, a lot of things going on in the downtown area. We have the rail line going in and that’s quite exciting, ASU coming to downtown has sparked a lot of interest, the new Convention Center is going to be huge and that’s sparked a lot of activity.”
But there is a big, costly, item standing in the way of many of those proposals, aging water and sewer pipes. Quay says, “We want to be sure that the infrastructure is in place for them to build where they want to build. I mean that’s the key thing, infrastructure is part of safety. We need to have adequate water supply to provide fire protection of these buildings and meet the domestic needs of these buildings. We also need to provide sewer service with out having sanitary sewer overflows. And so we want to be sure that in the areas that people want to build there’s adequate infrastructure to allow them to do that.”
Quay says one of the reasons why the infrastructure is not adequate is that the lines were built decades ago to support single-family homes. They did not anticipate back then that there would be interest later in creating larger multi-level development projects such as a condominium tower. “Predicting urban development is something we’ve never been really good at,” said Quay. “No city is good at predicting urban development. The infrastructure that was put in 50 years ago just was not sized because 50 years ago people really didn’t anticipate that that kind of development was going to occur there. A lot of this new development is happening in areas where the infrastructure really was not designed to handle the higher-densities going on and in those areas infrastructure is needed. If that development is realized in those places some significant infrastructure are going to have to be made at those locations. It’s the places around town that we consider are becoming urbanized, 24th Street and Camelback, 44th Street and Camelback, Central and Camelback, Downtown. Generally it’s those areas that are really becoming more urbanized over time.” [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
Central/Camelback developer has month to convince neighbors
[Source: Michael Clancy, Arizona Republic] — A Phoenix developer has another month to persuade neighbors that his plans for 400-foot buildings at Central Avenue and Camelback Road are sound. Reid Butler received a continuance for the project. It will come up for the third time before a subcommittee of the Alhambra Village Planning Committee on June 17, and to the full planning committee a week later.
Planner Marc Thornton said neighborhood groups around the vacant site “have expressed concerns rather than support” for the project, which includes some of the tallest buildings in the city. Butler’s proposed development would go up on the southwestern side of what village planner Thornton calls “a signature corner.” The city’s light-rail line cuts across the site, and three buildings would be erected on the northern side of the rail line.
Plans call for 1,000 residential units, 300 hotel rooms, and retail and office space designed to tie in to the city’s transit system. The site was approved for a height of 250 feet two years ago, and Thornton said the planning department tends to think 250 feet would be appropriate for the area.
