"In Phoenix, signs of a downtown ready to thrive again" article (Mesa: real estate, car insurance)

[phoenixmike11]

Phoenix native and former AZ Republic columnist praises downtown Phoenix's recent growth and asks if it can keep the momentum going.

Can Phoenix Maintain Its Booming Downtown? - CityLab

[Valley Native]

The author is absolutely right about the lack of private capital investment and a large corporate presence downtown. Granted, downtown has made significant improvements in the last decade or so, and it's a much more lively urban core than it used to be ... however, Phoenix is never going to be nationally or globally recognized as a major business center without the presence of corporate HQs, or even more regional HQs at the very least.

We're not going to attract the highly skilled, highly educated, or entrepreneurs/executives with ambition and venture capital if we keep promoting the sunny climate, cheaper housing, and mountain views as the main reasons to move here. Downtown can continue to attract small businesses, college students, and artsy types, but that's not going to help make it a world class urban core that it deserves to be. Jon Talton has sometimes come across as negative & pessimistic when he wrote for the Republic, but he is a realist, and I agree with him on many of his points.

[sexxxcblac]

Thanks for the article phoenixmike !
I love reading positive commentary about our Valley.

[goolsbyjazz]

Originally Posted by Valley Native

The author is absolutely right about the lack of private capital investment and a large corporate presence downtown. Granted, downtown has made significant improvements in the last decade or so, and it's a much more lively urban core than it used to be ... however, Phoenix is never going to be nationally or globally recognized as a major business center without the presence of corporate HQs, or even more regional HQs at the very least.

We're not going to attract the highly skilled, highly educated, or entrepreneurs/executives with ambition and venture capital if we keep promoting the sunny climate, cheaper housing, and mountain views as the main reasons to move here. Downtown can continue to attract small businesses, college students, and artsy types, but that's not going to help make it a world class urban core that it deserves to be. Jon Talton has sometimes come across as negative & pessimistic when he wrote for the Republic, but he is a realist, and I agree with him on many of his points.

I think this is a valid point.

[phx1205]

I still don't understand why Talton continues to write stories about how terrible he thinks Phoenix is. Move on man! You don't even live here anymore.

[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.

[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. The people who are paid a lot of money to market Phoenix need to take the blinders off, and as mentioned above...simply marketing it as cheap housing and warm winters just doesn't cut it, unless you are int he mortuary business. Las Vegas has direct flights from China now.....and the Chinese have plenty of places to gamble in Asia, but the Chinese love US real estate...and they've bought plenty in Phoenix. The Mexican dislike of the Chinese has very deep roots...I'm sure if you would do a little digging on who markets Arizona; you will see a lot of names ending in a vowel. I'm not going to use the term revers racism, because it is simply deep seated racism. One group is known for being hardworking, frugal, and efficient (while not making babies they can't feed, while the other...well, it's pretty obvious, but since it is a holiday mañana, and I am late for my siesta, I will have to tell you the rest later.

[observer53]

Originally Posted by phx1205

I still don't understand why Talton continues to write stories about how terrible he thinks Phoenix is. Move on man! You don't even live here anymore.

Really. He manages to say something grudgingly positive, and then goes right back to his old shtick.

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.

Well said.

[exit2lef]

Originally Posted by phx1205

I still don't understand why Talton continues to write stories about how terrible he thinks Phoenix is. Move on man! You don't even live here anymore.

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.

[locolife]

Originally Posted by Valley Native

The author is absolutely right about the lack of private capital investment and a large corporate presence downtown. Granted, downtown has made significant improvements in the last decade or so, and it's a much more lively urban core than it used to be ... however, Phoenix is never going to be nationally or globally recognized as a major business center without the presence of corporate HQs, or even more regional HQs at the very least.

We're not going to attract the highly skilled, highly educated, or entrepreneurs/executives with ambition and venture capital if we keep promoting the sunny climate, cheaper housing, and mountain views as the main reasons to move here. Downtown can continue to attract small businesses, college students, and artsy types, but that's not going to help make it a world class urban core that it deserves to be. Jon Talton has sometimes come across as negative & pessimistic when he wrote for the Republic, but he is a realist, and I agree with him on many of his points.

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.

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