This isn't your normal Phoenix development story. Everyone is used to the way things are normally done: A bully developer bulldozes over a hapless neighborhood that can't get an ear at City Hall.
This time the story is reversed. This time, the neighborhood and the developer are both cheerleading a project to clean up one of the worst blocks in downtown Phoenix. So are the Phoenix Planning Commission, downtown business people, and two state commissions trying to spruce up the "no man's land" between City Hall and the State Capitol.
They've been at it for two years, through several development schemes, to work out all the kinks--some of them considerable.
But the project is currently a no-go because the district's councilmember, Mary Rose Wilcox, has single-handedly derailed it.
And everyone is still trying to figure out why.
"MY HUSBAND AND I have watched this neighborhood go from a decent family-oriented neighborhood to nothing but drugs and prostitutes. . . . This project is like a ray of hope in the darkness," Karen Molina pleaded to Wilcox at a recent council meeting. Molina should know. She lives across the street from the proposed project that would redevelop the ten acres between Polk and Van Buren Streets, 12th and 15th Avenues. Like her neighbors, she can rattle off all the area's current amenities: burned-out and abandoned houses taken over by crack addicts, prostitutes and the mentally ill; County Attorney Richard Romley's controversial Club 902; the city's major homeless shelter; the razed remains of the El Rancho Motel; and a thirty-year-old apartment complex that's falling apart. Molina can tell you all about the crime in the neighborhood without once looking at the police statistics--11 of the city's 111 murders in 1988; a one-in-six chance of being a crime victim, compared to one in fifteen elsewhere in Phoenix. Most horribly, the neighborhood well remembers the 1986 slaying of six-year-old Angelo Jacquez, who was molested and strangled in an abandoned building by a transient from the nearby homeless shelter.
Even city planning maps highlight this area as an urban trouble spot. There are so many decayed buildings that rehabilitation is economically feasible for only a handful. But except for a black spot on a city map--effectively "redlining" the area and warding off investments or improvements--this is a neighborhood used to being ignored. Residents had tried for months to get the city to raze the building where Angelo was murdered, but their pleas were ignored. The only time the city has bothered to help, residents say bitterly, was during last year's Grand Prix, when international television coverage panned the area as the expensive race cars roared through. The city sanitation and other departments organized a major cleanup. Mattresses and trash were picked up. Transients were hauled off the streets. Police patrolled regularly up and down the area for the first time in years.
"There was nobody and no trash. It took the Grand Prix for them to give a damn," remembers Bonnie Towles, a 44-year-old, ex-Peace Corps volunteer who's lived in the neighborhood for eight years and has restored eight separate properties.
Towles is herself a crime statistic. In the last three years, she's been robbed, physically assaulted and had her properties burglarized and burned down. "I was angry all the time," Towles said. "I didn't sleep at night. My dogs barked constantly. There was so much traffic between the outdoor shelter, the El Rancho and the 902 bar it was frightening. It was a 24-hour drug supermarket. Young punk males walking the street--drugged out. Some days, I had to walk over them on my porch to get in my door."
So it surprised no one that developer Charlie Civers got such a warm reception from people like Karen Molina and Bonnie Towles when he proposed building a new complex that would wipe clean a three-block section of blight. In its place, he wants to build an office complex for state employees and retail shops, including a much-needed grocery store and a dry-cleaning shop. (Like others in the area who have tried to get loans from local banks, Civers found nobody was interested in financing a project here. He finally got $35 million from an Asian investment company.)
Although everyone wanted the area redeveloped, Civers at first sounded like any other developer: He wanted far too much density, too much height. His original project--a twelve-story office building and huge aboveground parking structure--would have dwarfed anything around it. But unlike other developers, Civers showed himself willing to compromise. Again and again, he went back to the drawing board. He cut down the size of his project seven separate times. By the time his project went to the city council zoning hearing on April 18, Civers had reduced his plans by two thirds.
By then, more than 300 signatures were gathered by neighbors to support the development. The Madison and Van Buren business associations embraced it. Approval already had been gained from the city hearing officer and the planning commission. Officials from the state's Governmental Mall Commission and the Capitol Mall Commission endorsed it. To most, the benefits of the project were obvious. "The continuation of the situation which exists out there today is a liability and a black eye to the whole City of Phoenix . . . the police and fire departments are continually there. Can we permit that to continue?" queried Tom Sullivan, Governor Rose Mofford's appointee to the Capitol Mall Commission.
So proponents were shocked when the council, on the urging of Councilmember Wilcox, said the hard-won compromise wasn't enough. Wilcox, whose representation of this area holds sway with other councilmembers, said she wanted it reduced again by nearly half.
As they say in the development world, that just "doesn't pencil out." Civers says it is financially impossible to build what Wilcox wants. And virtually every observer agrees.
Governmental mall chairman and state Representative Mark Killian is now personally pleading with Wilcox and other councilmembers to reconsider. He says he's never seen a situation where the neighborhood wanted a project and a councilmember trashed it.
"I've seen a lot of developers have problems, but not like this situation," Killian says in bewilderment. "No project has gone through the scope and scrutiny this project has. I've never known a developer to work with a neighborhood as these people have."
Land planner Dave Longey, one of the master planners for the governmental mall, says he's "dismayed over how the city and Mary Rose have handled this." He says he can't understand why things are turning out this way. "Charlie all along has been willing to play ball. He's quite committed and is the first developer to come in and really intend to do something." State officials are making such an issue of this case because they're embarrassed by the ugly stretch of decayed housing and dilapidated buildings that now exists along the entrance to the State Capitol. "Important dignitaries fly into the airport and we bring them to the capitol through that no man's land," he complains. Officials are well aware, he notes, that things won't change along that stretch unless private developers are enticed to rebuild the area.
In fact, both Killian and Longey believe this developer has been treated so badly, it will scare off anyone else. "If the project doesn't go through, it will be a long time before any private developer attempts this again," Killian warns.
CIVERS SPEAKS in the same language as most developers, even borrowing the infamous phrase coined by J. Fife Symington III. "Our downtown project will be world class," Civers says.
Civers originally wanted a project bigger than City Hall: a twelve-story building with more than 500,000 square feet of office space, a 100,000-
square-foot retail center and a mammoth multistory parking garage. Everyone agreed it was far too much. Wilcox suggested she'd favor something like a four-story, garden-office complex.
Civers went back to the drawing board. He proposed a ten-story, then an eight-story, followed by a six- and a five-story building. Finally, common ground was found at three stories and 238,000 square feet.
The Phoenix Planning Commission approved the compromise on a vote of five to two. By then, Civers was also offering to stipulate that a grocery store must be signed before groundbreaking, that he'd start construction within two years of zoning, that he'd give $50,000 each to the Woodland and Oakland Park Historical Districts for refurbishing existing homes, that he'd put the parking structure underground and that he'd pay relocation expenses for any resident, renter or owner whose housing was eliminated by demolition.
The neighbors showed up at the council meeting to express their support for the compromise.
But just hours before the council zoning hearing, Civers heard Wilcox was still not satisfied because the redevelopment would eliminate the "affordable housing" now available in the Dakota Apartments. Civers came up with a last-minute proposal, offering to donate two acres of his land to the city which could be used for new low-income housing.
Wilcox did not think this was enough. She told Civers she wants the project scaled back to 135,000 square feet and wants him to relocate the present structures. And then, if Civers completes all requirements, she said she wants the project to come back to the council for final approval.
Once more, Civers re-examined his plan. The project wasn't feasible with any more reductions in size, he concluded, but he made yet another concession. His latest offer was to actually build the low-income housing on the two-acre plot. He's proposing a public/private partnership which he will subsidize.
But the councilmember is sticking to her guns. Wilcox says she can't go along with the plan because it will destroy affordable housing, violate the Governmental Mall Plan and will wipe out the neighborhood character because of its size and scale. She thinks if neighbors are just patient, they'll see the same kind of renovation that's happening elsewhere in downtown Phoenix. "Over the last nine, ten years, you've seen the Roosevelt area [immediately to the north] come back," Wilcox says. "You've seen the Willow neighborhood [around Central and Thomas] come back. About two years ago, we started looking and saying, Can we save this neighborhood? The city has thought long and hard about it. It is very deteriorated. I welcome development. We'd love to have it . . . but, it is too much. I've asked him to reduce it, and we can work with him. To this day, he has not reduced it."
When reminded that Civers had indeed reduced his plans seven times, Wilcox brushes that aside with, "He won't cooperate. He won't cooperate." She says she is not persuaded by the developer's claims that her limitation is economically unfeasible. Her aim, she insists, is to protect the neighborhood.
Wilcox notes that adding state buildings to this area violates the Governmental Mall Plan that says such facilities won't be built north of Van Buren. That limitation, she stresses, came at the insistence of the same neighborhood that now says it wants Civers' project and its state offices.
Neighbors counter that they certainly didn't want state buildings displacing their livable housing, but the land Civers would redevelop is a different animal.
Wilcox worries the neighborhood is willing to trade off the negative impact of a state-office complex in order to gain a retail center. "The Governmental Mall Plan has been tried to be busted a whole lot of times," Wilcox says. "We tried to encourage people to come on in [and develop south of Van Buren]. We'll give you the world." But if the plan finally is busted with this project, she frets, the city will lose control and unwilling neighborhoods will be endangered.
Representative Killian of the Governmental Mall Commission says he can't understand this position. "Does she have some type of knowledge that the rest of us don't have? Why are the business people and neighbors for it and Mary Rose against it? It just doesn't make sense."
Wilcox further laments the loss of the Dakota Apartments, with more than fifty living units. Even with Civers' recent offer to build new housing, she says it's questionable how many of the units will be replaced and if they will be affordable for low-income people.
Wilcox isn't the only one suspicious of Civers' housing offer. Joanne Pratt, director of Neighborhood Housing Services, and Louisa Stark of Community Housing Partnership, say the apartments are worth saving. Low-income housing in the area is important because no one is building housing for the city's poor. The loss, they say, could put more people on the streets. "We need affordable housing that the people that are displaced can move into. Luxury condos are not the answer," Stark said.
Stark, who opposed Civers' project at the council zoning hearing, now says she'll support it if he builds low-cost housing. Civers insists he is committed to building low-income housing. Also, the relocation monies he's offering will help, he adds.
Neighbors, angry that the housing advocates publicly opposed the project at the zoning hearing, say they will hardly lament the demise of the Dakota Apartments. The complex is filled with crack addicts and prostitutes, they contend. And planner Longey says the apartments hardly fit the definition of safe housing. "Anyone with knowledge of safe housing knew those [apartments] were a powder keg," he says. "They weren't safe."
Besides, neighbors complain, both housing advocates owe allegiance to Wilcox for funding their pet projects.
"Mary Rose (Wilcox) lobbied Joanne (Pratt) and the gang and because they are getting money from the city, they stood up like a bunch of puppets and said everything Mary Rose wanted them to say," contends Helene Threadgill. Threadgill recently quit the Housing Services Board, but remains as a member of the organization because she believes in rebuilding downtown. Threadgill, a vocal neighborhood supporter of Civers' project, says she was pressured to oppose it. "Joanne called me and practically told me what to say at the meeting. `No thank you,'" she remembers telling the housing director. Pratt denies trying to influence testimony and says city funding did not dictate her opposition. "Mary Rose is just one vote on the council, she's obviously an important person, but she's not the sole responsible person for funding," Pratt says.
Returning fire to the angry neighbors, Wilcox says the developer's promise to put in a market is just a ruse to get their support. Civers has a letter of interest from Bashas' grocery chain and has promised a contract with a store before breaking ground. But Wilcox counters, "I talked to Johnny Basha and he very clearly told me that he is not in a contract and there will not be a market." She believes the neighbors have been duped by a slick developer preying on the wants of a desperate community. Civers says his deal with the city is contingent upon his building the grocery store first before work can begin on the office complex.
While Wilcox and Civers debated such nuts and bolts at the recent council meeting, other councilmembers worried out loud that further reductions could kill the whole project. Councilmembers Alan Kennedy and Skip Rimsza said they saw no benefit in approving a project destined to fail. Councilmember John Nelson asked that it be sent back to the planning staff to hammer out a compromise. But Wilcox interceded with her motion to limit the project to 135,000 square feet. She even distributed copies of what she wanted built. Longey found her plan "pathetic." It eliminated the offices and located the retail shops in a strip along Van Buren that he says was so skimpy, delivery trucks couldn't have serviced the buildings. "I've never seen a situation where at the last minute, after all the work and hearings, somebody comes in with a less-than-professional [scheme] and wins the day," Longey complains.
SPECULATION ON WHY Councilmember Wilcox so opposes the project is rampant among neighbors. Some think she has a personal vendetta against people involved with Civers; some think the city is trying to keep land values in this area depressed in case it builds a baseball stadium nearby; some think she was working on behalf of other developers who will eventually see the value of redeveloping this area. At one time, neighbors believed that Phil Gordon, a local developer known for rehabilitating old buildings, was somehow at the bottom of this. Gordon, who was one of two planning commissioners who voted against the project, had expressed interest in a number of properties within the development.
"That would have been over a year and a half ago. I have had no interest in redeveloping in that area because of the market," Gordon says. "I don't own anything and I have no interest in this."
Gordon says any development in that area will have to wait until the economy turns around.
"The day the state announces that they are going to be leasing, every developer in the world will be trying to develop that property," Gordon says.
Others agree this area will eventually be hot. "There's only fifty capitols in the United States," says political consultant Alfredo Gutierrez, and the only question is when this area will be redone. Dennis Burke, a member of the Central Village Planning Commission that split in its decision to support the project, says he believes the area should be saved to become a "Georgetown"--the upscale residential area in Washington, D.C. He says neighbors and the city should look beyond today's needs and see what people will need in the next century. But, he also says he can relate to the angry neighbors. "The question is, Will it come in our lifetime?" Burke says. "It's a tough decision."
Longey believes the issue goes much deeper: He's convinced the project was doomed in a turf battle between the city and the state.
"In preparing the Governmental Mall Plan, the state and county have always played the game," Longey says. "The city has always been the odd man out."
He notes the mall commission has always wanted a "mixed-use project" on the very land Civers wants to develop, but "knuckled under" to the city's insistence that the only commercial development in that area be in a strip along Van Buren. "The commission felt Civers' plan was in concert with the Governmental Mall Plan and that really irked the city staff," he recounts. "I think the city staff got to Mary Rose. Charlie has been working hard; it's the city and Mary Rose who have been unwilling or unable to work with Charlie."
Wilcox maintains she's opposed only because she's trying to "protect the neighborhood."
Neighbors don't feel very protected by their councilmember. They see the project's possible demise as one more nail pounded into a city-built cross. They'll endure the pain, they say, but they're not about to turn the other cheek. Some are warning about political consequences. "Mary Rose won't get a free ride next election. There'll be opposition," vows Threadgill.
For now, the neighborhood is on hold, waiting for the council to return from its summer break to again take up the Civers plan. For this neighborhood, it will be a long summer.
"It's the same old crap," says Towles, wringing her hands. "Business as usual for Mary Rose and the city. We live here. Where do they live?"
Except for a black spot on a city map, this is a neighborhood used to being ignored.
"I've seen a lot of developers have problems, but not like this situation," Mark Killian says in bewilderment.
Mary Rose Wilcox thinks if neighbors are just patient, they'll see the same kind of renovation that's happening elsewhere in downtown Phoenix.
Dave Longey is convinced the project was doomed in a turf battle between the city and the state.
