The realities of downtown Tucson’s redevelopment history - Inside Tucson Business: Guest Opinion

My family has been involved in downtown Tucson in one way for another for 50 years.

Back in the 1960s my dad owned a parking lot on Alameda Street west of Sixth Avenue. He hatched a deal to put a 14 story AT&T office building on the site, provided the rest of the block to the east fronting Sixth could be assembled for the project.

Dad got everything except a little strip of land facing Sixth Avenue but that one property owner refused to sell at any price. Ultimately a smaller building - one with the microwave tower on it - was constructed for the phone company on Dad's property.

The little strip of land that prevented the bigger project from happening remained vacant for another 40 years.

Ironically, Tucson city government officials have been very aggressive in condemning and tearing down other privately owned building downtown for their vision of a new downtown, which seems mostly about parking garages, government office buildings and the YMCA.

A map showing the transition of downtown real estate from private ownership to public ownership from the 1950s to today would illustrate the development of a massive government ghetto that has wiped out huge amounts of history - and, in the process, life as it once was.

Anyone who witnessed this transformation, would never trust Tucson city officials to ever try to "revitalize" or "save" downtown again.

Even more troubling is that city officials have worked in opposition to private enterprises that have tried to bring downtown back to life.

The Rollings family has spent millions of dollars working to revitalize the area south of 14th Street since Kelley Rollings bought his first piece or property 40 years ago, but have faced constant battles with the city, especially over leaking water mains that are made of cast iron.

Others have tried to sink their money into downtown and gone away.

The core problem is that Tucson city government officials want things done their way but the private sector to pay for it. The private sector wants to do things that will have a return on investment. In other words, be successful.

Rio Nuevo is a spectacular example of this failure. City leaders had wild ideas of sky bridges and aquariums.

They wanted to bring residential development downtown in a high-density urban environment. That begs the question as to why anyone who could afford it would pay money to leave a real urban environment in another locale for whatever Tucson might produce.

People who have the money come here and buy homes where they can watch roadrunners and enjoy the desert setting.

Meanwhile, there is not even a basic grocery store downtown. Convenience markets don't count.

Now it has been announced that there are going to be student housing projects downtown. People living in other neighborhoods around the University of Arizona now must be wondering what will become of the minidorms that have sprung up in their neighborhoods. At least student housing will be good for the bar businesses downtown.

If anyone suggests building a hotel downtown, please first answer the question as to what's going on downtown that would require anyone to rent a room there. Especially when there are so many nicer options elsehwere.

Do we need more office space downtown? For immigration defense lawyers?

Retail downtown? Only if it's funky and quirky. And owners better be prepared to answer questions from City Hall about whether their workers are unionized or what their corporate positions on gay marriage.

Corporate headquarters downtown? UniSource Energy's new building is under construction and Providence Service Corp. is right across the street. Good start. But those two sum up the entirety of large publicly-traded company headquarters we have in Tucson. These are the realities of downtown Tucson's history.

Contact Hugh Holub, executive director of the Center for Sustainable Development and an attorney who works in real estate development, public utility, water and environmental law, at HughHolub@msn.com.