General Tucson Thread

[MJLO]

You know, I read the AZ Star everyday online, and everyday there doesn't seem much to talk about. Colin will you go cause some drama down there so I have something to post about for Tucson!!! I love Tucson, and I want to have more traffic for it, but the Star never gives me anything and I feel like I don't pay enough attention to it.

[convulso]

the star has one of the thinnest opinion sections of any paper its size i've ever seen - they don't even run that much syndicated opinion...there's more editorial content in the local newsweekly.

[convulso]

finally - the local tv news can stop repeating itself and start a new cycle they can get a lot of mileage from:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070208/ap_on_...mmigrants_slain

the star will start trying to win some awards using this as a springboard as well.

[colin]

This is kind of scary stuff, because it appears that there is a group of vigilantes roaming northwest of Tucson in a van with assault rifles looking for illegal immigrants. A very similar incident occured in Eloy a week ago: 1 dead, boy hurt in attack on illegals

Where they got that they were "human-smugglers" from the description of the assailants, I don't know. I mean, how many human smugglers wear camos, berets and speak broken Spanish?

You had to kind of assume that it would come to this. The Minutemen have been effectively ostricized from the border, but there's a still a good portion of hard-line anti-immigrant people out there, many of whom are here in Tucson. Maybe I'm being too presumptuous, but, to me, this really sounds like a group of armed men systematically hunting down illegal immigrants. They'll be caught pretty quickly, but this will probably just lead to more attacks.

[MJLO]

that does sound scary, I understand people not wanting the waves of illegals, but killing people for being here is disgusting. All these people want are better lives. Most of them truly are innocent.

[colin]

Yeah, Tucson has been very quiet for the past few weeks. No development news, but is there ever any here?

But there also hasn't been much in the way of hostage situations, drug busts, high-speed chases and the other stuff that the news here goes crazy over. This lack of scandal, drama and intrigue has led the desperate, soap-operatic, local TV news teams to some sort of random report on homosexual encounters in public parks that's got them in trouble with PFLAG and GLAAD among others ("Bathroom or Bathhouse", February 8).

Nintzel came out in this week's Weekly and nodded toward the Grijalva appointment I had mentioned above (I knew he'd come through for me):

The Skinny (3rd Item)

Another item laughs at the tax breaks Oro Valley gave to what was supposed to originally be a very nice retail center, but has turned to just another big box + sea of asphalt eyesore for the suburbs. As if Oracle Road didn't have enough of that already.

[convulso]

here's a homosexual retort i found a few days ago to the gay bathroom scarysex story - it pissed a lot of gay people off (or pissed off a few vocal gay people). i agree that it's a ploy to get viewers, especially since kgun is in third place. it seemed needy, if you watched the piece - as in, 'please - we need viewers!'

...and damn - no more destry jetton!

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2007/02/02/206

Edited February 9, 2007 by convulso

[colin]

39-month ordeal beginning on I-10

After delays due to pipe dream tunnels and golf tournaments, the dreaded I-10 construction will start this summer.

[MJLO]

They need to revamp the entire infrastructure in this state. We are all going to feel a pinch for a while. I'm going to have to avoid I-17 all together when they start the widening to make it a normal freeway from two lanes to four up here.

What's going on in the Tucson Metro. Surely there has to be construction somewhere? A mall, A box store, A drug store? No news as to what's goin on there development wise at all. GRRRR.

[colin]

A developer frustrated with the speed of progress in Tucson? Never heard of that before. But these guys obviously are somewhat over-anxious.

Developer offers $2M in South Side deal

If you remember, this is the same deal that included the unnamed big box and would thus require an exception to the big box ordinance.

[MJLO]

It must be frustrating to be a developer in TUS though, I can't imagine all the hoops you have to go thru, combined with the brotherhood of NIMBY's

[convulso]

i'm thinking of taking a collection and buying a sympathy card and bouquet for tucson developers, if anyone's interested in contributing.

[MJLO]

lol they are probabally the same people turning the valley into a mega bedroom community! They can't feel to bad in TUS if they can go a couple miles up the road to PHX and build whatever the heck they want.

[colin]

Rancho Vistoso hotel and condos set: Oro Valley luxury complex work to start in September

I am very happy to hear about this, but I keep wondering: how long before the huge drop in re-sales of condos catches up with the sales of new ones. I mean, you can't just keep building condos. Or can you?

[MJLO]

if you have the $ you can build whatever you want. If I had a billion dollars and I wanted to build a 600ft sky scraper in the middle of downtown grand rapids, I could. It would just be an empty Icon on the sky.

[convulso]

if you have the $ you can build whatever you want. If I had a billion dollars and I wanted to build a 600ft sky scraper in the middle of downtown grand rapids, I could. It would just be an empty Icon on the sky.

[colin]

Good point. But I think Tucson hasn't reached the point where the traditional media can raise hell over "progress" like new housing developments and the asphalt seas of strip malls and big box stores. There are many people here who still don't get why that is wrong, or are willing to accept it since it's bringing in these invisible dollars to our community.

Tucson is still poor. We're not Scottsdale, nor are we like restrictive communities like Boulder, Santa Fe or even Flagstaff. We don't have the economic firepower to say "Stay away developers!" because those jobs are still needed and desired by most area residents.

As the desert is slowly raped, we will probably evolve to that state, but I can't say how long that will take exactly.

[MJLO]

I gotta ask, R Tucsons suburbanites as anti growth as the residents? This talk about a Tucson freeway extension makes me wonder, is there anyone not in the way of minor progress? At somepoint is there a line between responsible planning, and all blatant NIMBYISM because any chang is bad?

[convulso]

I gotta ask, R Tucsons suburbanites as anti growth as the residents? This talk about a Tucson freeway extension makes me wonder, is there anyone not in the way of minor progress? At somepoint is there a line between responsible planning, and all blatant NIMBYISM because any chang is bad?

Edited March 7, 2007 by convulso

[colin]

general questions are hard to really answer. i think, by definition, suburbanites anywhere are not opposed to a certain type of growth - a type they recognize - but i think there is a lot of hypocrisy in suburban notions of good growth. many of your dreaded NIMBYs are likely to be found in suburbs, and there is often a 'last-one-in-shut-the-door' sort of hypocrisy that a lot of people have whenever newcomers threaten to add to the sprawl that newly-minted 'residents' help create.

too, i think it is helpful to ask whether 'progress' is made up of the conventional things - is a freeway 'progress' because it will inevitably lead to economic growth?

[MJLO]

I understand your points. I understand what you are saying about a poor rural town in bama. However, Tucson is a large Midsized city on the world scene, it is neither rural, or poor. My comments aren't ever directed at anyone on here, just made to spur conversation . If the residents don't want new freeways I say better for them. What I am primarily interested in is, what are people going to do? Obviously Tucson is growing obviously the people in Tucson are socially progressive, but it seems they are anti-growth. Tucson metro is one of the fastest growing cities in the country though right? You can't stop people from moving to an area, you can try but as long as developers build more homes, you're going to get sprawl, and as long as residents in the core bust a nut everytime a five story building is proposed, you're going to get more sprawl. What do the residents of the area want to do about the infrastructure? LRT? anything? What you're going to end up with is a city of 1million people with the infrastructure for 500k. ( Stiffling myself from using examples from my hometown.)

[convulso]

colin - unless my atlas is wrong, it's the tortillas i was referring to (the range bounded by 79 to the west, 77 to the east and 60 to the north). the tortolitas are just north of oro valley. but i admit, i was only familiar with the tortolitas until i looked up the tortillas before making my previous post - i know the tortolitas when i see them, but they aren't where these here 'tortillas' are on my atlas - they're south of the tortillas.

trying to do my homework (maybe trying too hard)!

. . . . .

my point, matt, about rural change has nothing to do with tucson as an urban entity. the comparisons i could make with other situations in which the interests of town & country come into conflict would be appropriate. i agree with your point about tucson having an infrastructure outpaced by its growth - and that there is too much opposition to density-rich growth here - and that people often end up deserving what they get. but note that a new freeway that runs 30-50 miles north of tucson - and i mean 30-50 miles north of the last few outskirt suburban fringe tracts - could by definition not be 'infrastructure' for tucson. colin's point about tucson having avoided such growth in the past decades is right on, imho. a city can grow without following a boilerplate blueprint that every sprawl town in america unthinkingly emulates. it is easy for me to grouse about what is wrong in tucson (notice that i do it a lot), but it pays for me to remember how it could have gone even more wrong - and what happened, in the past, to make me so grateful that it didn't.

i was merely addressing the possibility that a northern bypass could cut through areas so far removed from even sub-suburban life that the changes that would occur would be tragic - because they would be so needless. it would not help those areas, even if it did help phoenix and tucson. and that is a bad formula - hurting the remote rural areas to help the urban ones (hence my deep south and CAP comparisons...which i didn't even really make, for brevity's sake).

[colin]

No, you're right, it's the Tortillas. I had never heard of them and had to look them up on the atlas. I just assumed Tortolitas. Sorry.

People here don't have to do a whole lot. The major growth over the next few years will be southwest and southeast of the city. Eastern Tucson has basically reached its end as it's now butting up against various boundaries, and the corridors that people always talk about running freeways on toward eastern Tucson are no longer warranted as the surface streets that serve them now are handling the traffic quite well, and those that aren't will be expanded in the next few years thanks to the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA).

The southeast side has I-10, and it's still two lanes from Kino east, which is still very much within Tucson City Limits and close to Downtown. There's plenty of room for expansion on that section and that's what will happen.

I'm not sure what'll happen to the southwest side though. Ajo is already pretty overloaded as is Valencia, and I think it's just a matter of getting to the point of no more room so people have to stop and go somewhere else.

You have to remember that Tucson still has quite a bit of open room to grow on its southeast side, much of which is part of the Houghton Area Master Plan which does a spectacular job of creating smart growth: schools, retail, healthcare, infrastructure and open space are all incorporated.

[convulso]

funny about ajo - i drove down to arivaca yesterday (what an interesting mini-trail that mustang / arivaca creek trail is!) and came back on 286 and then ajo way, around 4:30 or so. the traffic on ajo is getting to be too much for the amount of growth that you're talking about on the southwest side. a lot of people actually turn onto kinney / gates pass to get into tucson, using the roads that cut through the mountain park as through routes. sidewinding up the face of the hills at 20 mph in a string of cars stretching for nearly a mile is not cool. i guess the answer will be to extend ajo's four-lane portion further west.

and i agree - i think the tucson I-10 congestion that people are going to be worrying about in the near term is on the eastern side. like it or not, i see tucson to benson becoming pretty well developed over the next few years.

[colin]

For all of you who think nothing ever gets done in Tucson:

$120M hotel-casino going up

I don't know that I've brought this up before, but it's to be a replacement of Desert Diamond Casino, run by the Tohono O'Odham Nation (as part of their San Xavier District just south of Tucson) near I-19 and Pima Mine Road.

This hotel/casino would be the first of its kind in the Tucson area.