by David Safier
Yesterday I wrote a long post giving another side of the oft-repeated -- and incorrect -- implication in the Star that the Gadsden Company made over a million dollars in a "land flip" OK'd by the Tucson City Council. The post was based on a long conversation I had with Jerry Dixon, Gadsden Company's Chairman. We talked about other related issues as well, which I'm writing about today.
NOTE: What I wrote yesterday is more important than this post, since it rebuts anti-city government and anti-Rio Nuevo misinformation which will certainly be part of the mayoral and city council races. If you have to choose between the two, read yesterday's post.
I found Dixon to be an intelligent and well informed person on a number of issues relating to Tucson, and an outspoken critic of the Star. He also had some interesting things to say about the relative business friendliness of the Democratic and Republican parties. I'll put that at the end of the post (Hey, they do it on the news channels, right? -- string you along through the show, promising a story they save for the final two minutes).
On the Star
Dixon not only thinks the Star's reporting on downtown is a mispresentation. He feels it impedes Tucson's growth by convincing people our growing downtown is a mess.
He told me his son lived in Tucson and saw the bad rap the city gets in the Star. Then he moved to Phoenix and found the AZ Republic is far more of a civic booster. The result: Tucson residents have a bad image of the city and the way it's run, and Phoenix residents have a better opinion of their city. The irony is, that's the exact opposite of the national perspective, where Tucson is high on a number of livability scales and Phoenix is portrayed as hot, crowded and unattractive.
"[Phoenix has] a bad national image," Dixon said, "but a great local press image. . . . It's just exactly the opposite of what we have here in Tucson. We have a great national image and a crappy local press on our case. I don't know what the deal is. I talked to the [Star's] editorial staff, and I think they think they're on some great investigative newspaper thing. If they could say something nice, they won't. If they can say something bad, they will. Our company got an $8.5 million new market tax credit allocation for the project we're building. That's the first one in Southern Arizona's history. It was a wonderful story. Bank of America awarded it to us because we're doing all the right things -- the right location, the right census tract, the small incubator business we're starting, projected to employ 93 people and generate $400,000 a year in sales tax revenue for the city. You would think that would be something where the newspaper would say, 'Hey, here's a good little business story.' They wouldn't even write about it."
The bad press bothers Dixon partially because some of it is directed at his company, of course, but he says the problem is much larger than that. He thinks our rebound from the current economic downturn will be slower because of the Star's incessantly negative coverage.
Dixon explained, "Here's the sad repercussions of [the Star's negative coverage of the city]. Our economic recovery time from this major recession we've all suffered is extended by those negative articles. . . . Those other cities that are pro-city in their public press will recover much faster than a city that has the negative press. [What they're writing] is not only hurtful today, it's going to cause us to recover slower than if they were positive."
On the Streetcar
The four mile streetcar, which Dixon told me will stretch from UA's medical center on the east to the Mercado San Agustin on the west, is reasonably controversial, and the Star seems intent on bad-mouthing it. Dixon is a big supporter of light rail. The senior citizen center to be built west of the freeway (the center of Brodesky and O'Dell's "outrage") will benefit greatly from light rail, according to Dixon. The residents will be able to climb on streetcars and take advantage of downtown amenities -- restaurants, shopping, movies, concerts -- as well as lectures and other events at the university. That's just one example. Lots of downtown's development will only happen because of the transportation access afforded by the streetcar.
"A rubber-tired bus going by a piece of real estate doesn't add value to that real estate," Dixon commented. "A fixed car streetcar or light rail system adds value to the adjacent real estate -- taxable, assessed value."
Every city that has built light rail has seen real estate values climb along the line, according to Dixon, which means more tax dollars for cities and municipalities.
"As the land value goes up, people come in and build condominiums, they build restaurants, they build businesses. In today's reality with [increasing fuel prices], you have to consider the cost of transportation in your decision where you're going to locate your living area. . . . The university is going to award 1500 student housing units on the streetcar line. One of their criteria was, it had to be on the streetcar line. Our company is going to build somewhere between 500 and 800 residential units on our side of the freeway on the streetcar line. We want people to park that car and use that streetcar. We're willing to accept that real estate taxes will go up. That's the way it is, and that's the way it should be."
"TEP would not, in my opinion, have relocated to Broadway without the streetcar frontage," he continued. "I do not believe Providence Service Corporation would have relocated where they did off Broadway without a streetcar. I do not think Madden Media would have relocated into the MacArthur building one block off the streetcar line had the streetcar not been coming. I do not think there would be 12 new restaurants in the downtown core without those businesses being here and the workers wanting to have restaurants to go to. The fact that we spent $65 million taking the streetcar underneath the 4th Ave. overpass is just some of the hard core, heavy lifting the city had to do to make this even a possibility. My fondest hope is that three or four years from now, when the streetcar's running, the people from Austin and Portland and Milwaukee and some of the other cities that have really regentrified in a cool way will want to come to Tucson to see what we did."
Dixon and I talked about Portland's growth into a first rate city, which I witnessed during the 30 years I lived there before moving to Tucson in 2003. The light rail was a major part of the whole plan. The Pearl District, for instance, which is adjacent to the downtown core, was nothing but empty warehouses when I moved to Portland. It looked like a post-WW II bombed out city. Now it's like a new little Manhattan, filled with condos which were often bought up even before they were built. The streets are lined with shops, restaurants and markets, and the light rail that runs though it can carry residents all over the city. Without the rail, the Pearl wouldn't be the Pearl. Neighborhood denizens can park their cars for weeks at a time and do just fine, and other city dwellers can come to wander around through the art galleries, bookstores, fine furniture stores and restaurants, able to spend their money without searching for a parking spot. As you can imagine, the area, as well as downtown in general, have become tourist meccas, bringing in money and business and tax dollars for the city.
Dixon admits the streetcar will cause problems for business as it's being constructed, as I remember it did in Portland. "In the next 12 months," he predicted, "they're going to be tearing up the streets for the streetcar, and people will be angry for awhile, but I think the people who have made the investment today will be thankful when that is done."
On Democrats, Republicans, and the Pro-Business Party
We've been seeing signs of wariness among business leaders about the ideologically driven agenda of the Republican party. I've heard from Democratic legislators that business people come up to them privately and express concern about the harm Republicans are doing to Arizona's reputation and its future business prospects.
Dixon was willing to say openly what others are saying more quietly.
"I think the Democratic party in general and this [CIty] Council in particular are very, very pro-business," he told me. "What I've seen of the Republican party, which is supposedly pro-business, is not pro-business at all. . . . On the national level, I don't think they're pro-business either. I think it's the Democratic party that's taken that mantle away from them."
That doesn't mean Dixon is completely happy with the way the city of Tucson deals with business. He sees what he calls "some inefficiencies and financial disincentives." But he believes it's trying to improve. "I think the city is trying to get more pro-business. They have a ways to go, but I don't think they're anti-business at all."
The Star Fosters Discussion on Tucson's Future Growth
The Star certainly provided some interesting raw data to chew on from their survey earlier this month. Admittedly, some of the questions were intolerably leading and biased, or just plain dopey. But there is some gold in there. I found some insights into Tucsonans' attitudes toward water, transportation, and development.
Read more about what I see—and failed to see—in the data...
Continue reading "The Star Fosters Discussion on Tucson's Future Growth" »