"In Phoenix, signs of a downtown ready to thrive again" article (2015, apartments)

[locolife]

Originally Posted by Hal Roach

Zippy, the number is down to five...one of them was gunned down in front of a fried chicken take-out place the other afternoon.

As for Phoenix...I think the International Arrivals screen at PHX that only lists a daily AeroMexico flight from Hermosillo speaks volumes.

Uhhh....

CUL Culiacan, Mexico
CUN Cancún, Mexico
GDL Guadalajara, Mexico
HMO Hermosillo, Mexico
LHR London, England
MEX Mexico City, Mexico
MZT Mazatlán, Mexico
PVR Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
SJD Los Cabos, Mexico
SJO San Jose, Costa Rica*
YEG Edmonton, Canada
YLW Kelowna, Canada*
YQR Regina Canada*
YVR Vancouver, Canada
YWG Winnipeg, Canada*
YXE Saskatoon, Canada*
YYC Calgary, Canada
YYJ Victoria, Canada*
YYZ Toronto, Canada
ZIH Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, Mexico*

[BIG CATS]

All I cans say is I hope that downtown has better plans than duds like CityScape. Went there once, never will again. We need something to attract and hold people downtown, and we always seem to fall short.

[JGMotorsport64]

Originally Posted by BIG CATS

All I cans say is I hope that downtown has better plans than duds like CityScape. Went there once, never will again. We need something to attract and hold people downtown, and we always seem to fall short.

Need more street level exterior facing business in our high rises. At night, the often long distance from corner to corner might deter people from going down there versus going to Tempe or Scottsdale.

[BIG CATS]

Originally Posted by JGMotorsport64

Need more street level exterior facing business in our high rises. At night, the often long distance from corner to corner might deter people from going down there versus going to Tempe or Scottsdale.

Agree. The shops in CityScape are SO WEIRD. I mean, just trying to find the bowling alley entrance is confusing in and of itself! The fountains are lame, and the warning signs around there are just bizarre (particularly the incontinence one hahaha). And as you mentioned, the long distances are the real killer. If you want to leave the Dbacks game and go to the Heard Museum? Call a cab or pay for light rail. Wanna hit up the Phoenix Opera after going to Lou Malnati's? Bust out the walking shoes! Yes, I know those are in Uptown, but its still Central Phoenix for me, and same goes for many tourists.

[locolife]

Originally Posted by BIG CATS

Agree. The shops in CityScape are SO WEIRD. I mean, just trying to find the bowling alley entrance is confusing in and of itself! The fountains are lame, and the warning signs around there are just bizarre (particularly the incontinence one hahaha). And as you mentioned, the long distances are the real killer. If you want to leave the Dbacks game and go to the Heard Museum? Call a cab or pay for light rail. Wanna hit up the Phoenix Opera after going to Lou Malnati's? Bust out the walking shoes! Yes, I know those are in Uptown, but its still Central Phoenix for me, and same goes for many tourists.

CityScape sure beats Patriots Square by a landslide.

Yeah, you would need to take an 11 minute light rail ride if you wanted to go to the opera, Phoenix Art Museum or Heard but I actually find that downtown Phoenix has a lot that's very walkable now.

[Valley Native]

Originally Posted by exit2lef

It's now been almost decade since he lost his Arizona Republic column and exiled himself to Seattle. It's bad enough that he's so bitter that the Phoenix of his youth is gone, but even worse that he's still misperceived as an expert on the Phoenix of today. As for this particular CityLab post, it's essentially a rerun of themes repeated ad nauseum on his own blog, only with a less vitriolic tone. When writing for his regular readers, he goes full negative, knowing many of them, at least those who comment on his blog, will cheer him on. For CityLab, he dialed back the negativity and resorted to slightly less obvious condescension and damning with faint praise.

Talton has every right to express his viewpoints & concerns about Phoenix. After all, he is a native ... this is where he grew up regardless of where he lives now. Like him or not, he does make sense on a fair share of things he says. Granted, he is pessimistic sometimes, but he's also a realist. When he brings up the fact that Phoenix is lacking in Fortune 500/1,000 firms compared to other large cities & metro areas our size, he is absolutely right.

So now the question is: are we going to sit on our hands and keep Phoenix a small business city with a national reputation of being a huge small town, or are we going to grow up and do positive things to change it? Sometimes you have to be realistically negative in order to send a wake up call to become more proactive & turn things positive.

Originally Posted by locolife

Downtown Phoenix has been seeing a fair amount of companies looking to relocate there with a few solid wins over the last year.

You seem to think that the only way the core is successful is if we can somehow attract Amazon.com or something along those likes, companies of that size usually stay wherever they were started, not that it's impossible but it is a daunting task. I'm happy to see an uptick in incubation here, technology companies that may someday become the next big thing growing their roots in downtown would be a great success story.

I didn't say it's the only way, and I agree that downtown has made significant strides, but a large corporate presence is what is definitely lacking in Phoenix's downtown. I hope there is an increase in tech firms, financial firms, and other white collar type businesses that can grow and become big name companies. Godaddy.com has been a success story, but it's located in Scottsdale. We recently lost US Airways (now American Airlines) and Henkel (formerly Dial Corp.). The former moved to Texas and the latter is packing up and moving to Connecticut. We can't keep getting passed over by big business, or letting it slip away. There has to be more incentive for corporations to stay and/or move here.

Originally Posted by locolife

Here's a rundown of what the business journal shows for last year, there's been some good moves for downtown and a pretty strong year for the valley as a whole.

Downtown Phoenix:

Integrate Inc., a cloud marketing software and media services provider, is relocating its headquarters from Scottsdale to downtown Phoenix.
DoubleDutch
Uber
Seed Spot
Gabriel Partners

• Farmers Insurance announced a huge regional operations center in the North Phoenix financial services corridor
• Carlisle Companies, a Fortune 1000, publicly-traded firm, announced its relocation from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Phoenix.
• Orbital ATK said it was building a new facility and expanding in Gilbert.
• Vixxo picked Scottsdale for its new HQ.
• In Liberty Center at Rio Salado, Liberty Property Trust decided to invest in spec buildings.
• John Hancock decides to put its western regional office in the Papago area of Tempe.
• Oscar Insurance picks Phoenix over Denver.
• Possibly the deal of the year is the international headquarters relocation of Kudelski(Nagra USA) from Switzerland to Phoenix.
• Buckeye's investment in infrastructure, including the purchase of a private water system, landed it a major manufacturer, Cardinal AG.
• Mesa's ready-to-occupy Fiesta-area facility landed it manufacturer Dexcom.
• Charles Schwab, already with a major presence in the Valley, added 600 tech jobs in Phoenix.
• Connecticut-based Rogers Corporation is moving its global headquarters from the town giving the firm its name to Chandler because of service after the sale.
• Had to throw this in even though it's not a deal, but the sum of economic development deals. Three years of adding high-value jobs to Arizona actually moved the needle on the state's average income.
• Truckstop.com expands into the Phoenix market because California costs too much.
• Finland publicly-traded Huhramaki announces plans to open in Goodyear.
• A cold winter in Cincinnati sends Matson Money to Scottsdale, along with access to bike trails.
• Republic Services joins the workplace-to-workforce movement planning a regional operations center in Chandler.
• Carvana moves its headquarters across the river to the Liberty Square at Rio Salado spec building that made news in January.
• Mutual of Omaha expands its mortgage operations to Scottsdale to avail the institution of a growing mortgage niche.
• ZipRecruiter announces it's taking over one of the floors abandoned by Zenefits.
• Long-awaited in Pinal County, PhoenixMart goes vertical at last.
• This is the story of the year: Lucid Motors announces a $700 million, 2,000-employee OEM electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Casa Grande. It was also the most-read economy story of the year.
• Orbital ATK announces a new technology center with 500 jobs in an Allred Companies spec flex building in Chandler.
• McKesson of San Francisco announces its twinned regional serivce center on the Salt RiverPima-Maricopa

All this is beneficial to the Phoenix area, but many of the firms on your list are locating to the suburbs, not downtown. I like that fact that the metro area has multiple urban/business centers, but in some ways it's becoming overkill and subtracting from the main urban core. Think of how much more prosperous, vertical, and energized downtown Phoenix would be if more of the above listed companies were located there instead of Chandler, etc.

[Hal Roach]

[quote=locolife;46765029]Uhhh....

CUL Culiacan, Mexico
CUN Cancún, Mexico
GDL Guadalajara, Mexico
HMO Hermosillo, Mexico
LHR London, England
MEX Mexico City, Mexico
MZT Mazatlán, Mexico
PVR Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
SJD Los Cabos, Mexico
SJO San Jose, Costa Rica*
YEG Edmonton, Canada
YLW Kelowna, Canada*
YQR Regina Canada*
YVR Vancouver, Canada
YWG Winnipeg, Canada*
YXE Saskatoon, Canada*
YYC Calgary, Canada
YYJ Victoria, Canada*
YYZ Toronto, Canada
ZIH Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo,

you just reinforce my point, thank you.

[ajonesaz]

Originally Posted by Valley Native

All this is beneficial to the Phoenix area, but many of the firms on your list are locating to the suburbs, not downtown. I like that fact that the metro area has multiple urban/business centers, but in some ways it's becoming overkill and subtracting from the main urban core. Think of how much more prosperous, vertical, and energized downtown Phoenix would be if more of the above listed companies were located there instead of Chandler, etc.

That's where the employees are. I wouldn't want to drive downtown for a job. They need to improve the neighborhoods around downtown.

[locolife]

[quote=Hal Roach;46770927]

Originally Posted by locolife

Uhhh....

CUL Culiacan, Mexico
CUN Cancún, Mexico
GDL Guadalajara, Mexico
HMO Hermosillo, Mexico
LHR London, England
MEX Mexico City, Mexico
MZT Mazatlán, Mexico
PVR Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
SJD Los Cabos, Mexico
SJO San Jose, Costa Rica*
YEG Edmonton, Canada
YLW Kelowna, Canada*
YQR Regina Canada*
YVR Vancouver, Canada
YWG Winnipeg, Canada*
YXE Saskatoon, Canada*
YYC Calgary, Canada
YYJ Victoria, Canada*
YYZ Toronto, Canada
ZIH Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo,

you just reinforce my point, thank you.

Glad you enjoy being proven wrong, pesky facts eh?

[Bondurant]

Originally Posted by Zippyman

Another article lamenting the fact that Phoenix isn't like "urban" cities, placing precedence on having a "walkable" downtown, even claiming that Phoenix isn't as "walkable" as Detroit.. Lol. Clueless.

News flash, the six people in Detroit who live in a high rise & walk to their office in the center of Detroit aren't the most important people driving the economy there. Detroit's corporate headquarters aren't there because downtown is or was ever "walkable", they're their because the office space was nearly free, and they dragged their suburban workforce into the city, not the other way around. GM spent more on office furniture & paint than they did on the RenCen buildings and land ($500 million on rehabbing a $600 million purchase) Nearly all of GM's employees leave the city at light-speed after work precisely because the city is effectively uninhabitable. That shouldn't be a "role model" for Phoenix.

Anyone who uses the term "cookie-cutter" when referring to Phoenix just doesn't "get" capitalism - big swings in employment lead to mass-produced housing, and that isn't a negative thing, nor is it unique to Phoenix - large swaths of *every* major city in the U.S. have "cookie-cutter" housing, just built in a different era.

Downtown Detroit is very walkable actually.