Scottsdale Issues

• A Vision for Downtown Scottsdale
• South Scottsdale Revitalization
• McDowell Sonoran Preserve & Desert Discovery Center
• Housing Options
• Planning for Scottsdale’s Future

A Vision for Downtown Scottsdale

Downtown Scottsdale is a pedestrian-friendly collection of one-of-a-kind shops, restaurants, galleries, clubs and cultural attractions. There are hotels in the heart of Downtown and a range of residential options from lofts to luxury condos to affordable spaces for working artists. It’s an active 24-hour place that includes boutique grocery stores and other resident-oriented shops and services. It’s easy to get around on foot or by trolley. There’s convenient parking.

There are great public gathering places Downtown at Civic Center, along the Arizona Canal and at Scottsdale Waterfront. These places are connected by shady tree-lined main streets with smaller gardens and plazas located between them.

There’s art everywhere…galleries, working studios, artist residences, the Scottsdale Artists School, outdoor displays, the ArtWalk, art demonstrations, public art and special events. Art-related uses can get some sort of special incentive for locating Downtown. In addition to the traditional Western art and representational works, there are more “incubator” and cooperative galleries with work by young, emerging artists.

Each historic specialty district has its own distinctive character, whether the Old West of east Main Street or the contemporary Southwestern look of Marshall Way. These districts have in common a small-scale, pedestrian-oriented character perfect for window-shopping, with shaded arcades and benches.

The shops Downtown are one-of-a-kind, an eclectic mix of antiques, junque, clothing, western wear, Native American art, crafts and who-knows what. These are shops you can’t find at Kierland or back home in Duluth. You can spend days exploring them.

There are great restaurants, coffee bars and nightclubs, catering to a wide range of ages and preferences. You can get an inexpensive lunch at an outdoor café, dine at the Culinary Institute or enjoy a memorable gourmet dinner. You can listen to jazz, smile n’ style at a bar or sip a latte and people-watch.

In the evening, in addition to the clubs, you can enjoy a performance at the Center for the Performing Arts, one of the amphitheaters, Theater 4301 or other performing art venues.

Downtown Scottsdale becomes a “must see” draw for visitors, a great place to live, an increasingly important generator of sales tax revenues and the cultural heart of the city.

How can we bring this vision to life?

1. Push for extension of canal bank improvements and trails

2. Continue to add public parking downtown

3. Develop programs to support and promote art-related businesses and artist studios Downtown

4. In cooperation with the business community, develop and publicize a program of low-interest loans, fee waivers, grants and other incentives to support existing businesses and Downtown organizations

5. Provide City/Cultural Council programming and management of the new Waterfront amphitheater

6. Work toward construction of the Museum of the West

7. Work closely with downtown developers to bring new projects on-line as quickly and efficiently as possible

8. Make sure that the Downtown Plan establishes guidelines for building height, bulk, pedestrian amenities, parking, street design and character

9. Push for improvements to Camelback Road, Scottsdale Road and Indian School Road that beautify them, increase safety and comfort for walking and strengthen connections among the various Downtown districts

11. Create better ground rules for transitioning between Downtown developments and the surrounding neighborhoods

12. Encourage addition of resident-oriented shops and services Downtown

13. Refresh the Downtown streetscape improvements on Fifth Avenue, West Main Street and in Old Town.

14. Keep the trolleys free!

South Scottsdale Revitalization

Economic revitalization efforts in south Scottsdale suffer from lack of a clear vision and policy framework beyond that articulated in the General Plan. We have an opportunity through the area planning process to remedy this if staff is willing to follow through on the citizen-driven “village” planning approach, as was directed by Council.

Revitalization in this area involves work on many fronts:

• Building strong and livable neighborhoods
• Continuing to improve public safety
• Rebuilding the base of neighborhood shops and services
• Expanding user-friendly transit, such as the trolley
• Realizing the potential of ASU Skysong
• Improving parks and open spaces throughout the area, including connection between Papago
Park and Indian Bend Wash
• Re-thinking strip commercial and auto row areas, working with business owners and neighbors

McDowell Sonoran Preserve and Desert Discovery Center

State Land Reform and Completion of the Preserve

There is a lot riding on the State Land Reform Initiative on the November ballot. Scottsdale has acquired, or is in the final stages of acquiring, all but the State Trust Lands within our future Preserve boundaries.

If the initiative is approved, approximately 16,100 acres of State Trust Land within the Preserve boundaries will be designated as permanent conservation lands, and an additional 3,543 acres can be designated for conservation through local planning. These conservation lands can be sold for appraised value but without an auction.

I strongly support passage of the State Trust Lands Reform Initiative and completing the Preserve. This is essential to our character, quality of life — a legacy for Scottsdale’s future.

The Desert Discovery Center

In the mid-1980s, I was the planner for 4,400 acres of State Trust Land in north Scottsdale. This land included the entire area around Pinnacle Peak. I encouraged the State Land Department and planning permit holder to set aside land for Pinnacle Peak Park and for a museum that would teach people about the Sonoran Desert, similar in concept to Tucson’s Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.

I brought in natural history interpretive facility designers who had worked for the museum in Tucson, exhibit and museum professionals working on the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and others with expertise in the desert environment. We prepared site plans, exhibit concepts and a management plan for what was then called the “Desert Discovery Museum”.

As things turned out, over time, the size of the park was scaled back and development densities around the museum and park site were increased. The decision was made to re-locate the museum to the Preserve Gateway.

The Desert Discovery Center can provide the opportunity for residents and visitors alike to learn and appreciate the rich desert environment in which we live – it can help them learn to better understand what they see along Preserve trails. It can incorporate cutting edge technology with green architecture that disappears into the desert landscape. It should, in my opinion, be a first-class center for interpretation and learning, not a glorified trailhead.

I am strong advocate for the McDowell Sonoran Preserve and Desert Discover Center.

Housing Options

Scottsdale is at a critical stage with regard to housing. The most fundamental part of being a “most livable” city is – having a place to live. Housing is a basic need and we need to expand the choices available for Scottsdale living.

While it’s great to have a strong luxury housing market in Scottsdale, there’s a flip side to consider as well. Not having moderately priced homes may actually hurt our economy. It drives out young families and makes it hard for seniors to stay within the comfort of familiar neighborhoods if they need to move. Essential members of our workforce – teachers, healthcare workers, firemen, police and many more – cannot afford to live in the city where they work. Traffic congestion is worsened as many people are forced to drive to and from jobs in Scottsdale from their homes in outlying communities. We can and should do something to help broaden the range of housing options in Scottsdale.

I’d like to think of Scottsdale as a city that offers housing choices

That you can live…

• On a horse spread or golf course acreage in the desert up north or
• In a tidy master-planned development with walking paths and winding streets or
• In a funky downtown loft or
• A very cool “green” condo
• In a $3 million downtown penthouse
• In a hip yet moderately priced mid-century modern ranch style home
• In a welcoming senior living complex
• In a vintage greenbelt apartment building
• In a modest apartment complex that’s comfortable, friendly and safe

The challenge for Scottsdale

The City Council the tools we need to make this dream of choice become reality. We need adopted policy, plans and ordinances to use. It will take collaboration and community support, and the help of the Human Services Commission, Transportation Board and others.

I keep coming back to choices – we can choose, now, to do nothing about this and let the opportunities represented by growth and revitalization slip away…or we can choose, now, to get our act together and develop a specific plan for action that City Council can approve and start, NOW, to implement.

We can start by protecting neighborhoods such as those along Chaparral or, in the future, by asking projects such as Waterview or Son of Orchidtree to include moderate-income housing or pay into a Housing Trust Fund. Let’s develop a solid and specific program.

What do other cities do?

There are many other options used in other cities, including

• Affordable Housing Trust Fund
• Building Permit and fee waivers
• Down payment assistance
• First month rent and damage deposit assistance
• Homebuyer education programs
• Inclusionary zoning (mandatory requirement in market rate development)
• Employer assisted housing
• Overlay plans
• Fast track processing for affordable/workforce housing

Planning for Scottsdale’s Future

Scottsdale has always prided itself in being forward-thinking and innovative. We have always had a strong program of planning, with attention paid to design and development quality. Over the past twenty years, this proud tradition has eroded. We now lack focused plans and policy to address the unique character and needs of areas such as the Airpark, south Scottsdale and the central parts of the city. Our downtown plan is twenty years old.

Almost three years ago, I started pushing for creating a citywide set of village/area plans for Scottsdale. Now, the area planning process is underway. The idea behind the area planning approach endorsed by Council was born from the “village plans” adopted in Phoenix – bringing citizens, business community members and others to collaborate in drafting the plans, staying together after plan adoption to play a role in implementation.

Scottsdale’s area plans

Scottsdale lacks up-to-date, long-range planning tools. The City Council is making significant decisions about Scottsdale’s future without clear, area-specific policy to guide it. The general plan offers broad-brush concepts and must be updated during the next City Council term. We need more detailed area plans that set policy and priorities for each unique part of Scottsdale. These plans will form the foundation for Scottsdale’s next General Plan

I proposed, shortly after election to my first term in 2004, that Scottsdale prepare plans similar to the village plans, to cover the entire city. It took almost two years to get this process underway, starting with the Downtown plan. Area plans for the Airpark and Southern Scottsdale are now also being prepared.

This is a good start, but I’m concerned that the process being used has diverged sharply from direction given by City Council. Staff was directed to implement a citizen-driven planning process, similar to that used for the village plans in Phoenix. This has not been done.

The first results of the process used are now embodied in the draft Downtown Plan. This is a very high-altitude policy plan that creates an appropriate vision for Downtown but fails to identify and address important issues. It does not give City Council and staff the focused direction and tools needed to maintain our momentum and make informed decisions. We need issue analysis, design character direction, neighborhood transition guidelines, downtown street character studies, a system of public open space and much, much more.

I hope that during review of the draft plan, the battleship can be turned and we can get back to the Council’s original intention in authorizing this and other area plans. We need some form of ongoing citizen and business community involvement, not occasional focus groups. The planning process should be as much about establishing two-way communication and learning as about getting to policy. If this can be achieved, the resulting plan will truly reflect Scottsdale’s creative vision, will be broadly supported and have a life beyond its adoption.