What could possibly be better than Lunar New Year?
by Karen Falkenstrom
hen I was startlingly young for such a realization (like, NINE), I nonetheless came to the realization that I was never going to have children. I was too young to fathom the wherefores and how-tos and implications for my future, yet I knew at some unspeakably deep level that my body was simply not going to do that creating a family thing.
At (rare) moments, I’ve thought (briefly) that I’m probably really missing out on some quintessentially female experience, that I’ll never quite fulfill the potential dictated by my chromosomes and anatomical structure…
Anyway, I’ve come to believe I am fulfilling some other, lesser-known, yet essentially feminine role by choosing NOT to exercise my right to bear arms, and legs, and all the other requisite parts that make up a new, tiny human being. I remain truly and forever in awe of those who have gone through labor—sometimes, as in the case of my friend Maureen, up to 32 hours of it. I’m sure it makes an 11,000 foot plunge from an airplane or a hike into and out of the Grand Canyon (things I have managed to do and survive) seem like inarguably pleasant ideas.
Either way, I consider myself blessed. I’ve had to struggle for, and eventually find, a very broad definition of “family,” one that fills me with a sense of connection and permanence and good, growing work. Sure, “we are,” all, “family. (I got all my sisters with me)” and so on. What’s more: everybody’s got one, and we are all part of one (no matter how dysfunctional or remote). Somebody put us here and many somebodies surround us and support us.
Which is why I am suggesting--though I’m in conflict over my dedication to the Lunar New Year on January 22 (first day of monkey year)--that January’s, and perhaps even 2004’s most delicious and fun-for-all event is the 4th Annual Family Arts Festival on the 11th.
You should know I work for the Tucson Pima Arts Council, which is coordinating the event. But if you know me well enough, you’ll also know that’s not why I think the Festival is going to be fabulous. My astrological composition disallows that sort of thing.
The fact is, it’s going to be a great event because it’s about how there’s art everywhere in our lives, though we might not notice all the time. The event is HUGE, and it’s FREE, and, okay, I had to edit the program text, so I’m pretty sure there’s going to be something for almost everyone, whether you like listening to electronic music by the Ice on Mars (I’m serious), or watching people hit things with sticks. It’s not just for kids, although accommodating kids figures prominently in the planning.
And it’s free… did I mention that?
Check it out, 11am to 5pm on Sunday, January 11, sprawling over the vast expanse from the Tucson Convention Center’s northern meeting rooms, through La Placita, over the Congress/Broadway pedestrian bridge to El Presidio Park. I guarantee it’ll be worthwhile.
And if I’m wrong or if I’m right, email me at majorcartersharley@hotmail.com, and tell me what’s what. 
See Arts for more information on the Family Arts Festival (since all you get here are odd tidbits, personal history and strong opinions). For some interesting multi-cultural holiday descriptions see www.familyculture.com. For Lunar New Year info, my favorite web site is www.new-year.co.uk/chinese/calendar.htm, entirely designed by Scots!
Private Money Flowing into Downtown
Investors and Builders Bringing Passion along with Capital
by James Reel
or decades, private-sector developers have regarded Downtown as, at best, a wasteland as dry as the Santa Cruz, where their money would shrivel up and die. But suddenly private money is flowing Downtown again, washing mixed-use developments up onto the banks of the Santa Cruz itself and irrigating the older business and residential districts just east of I-10.
Among the most significant private developers diving into Downtown projects:
- Doug Biggers, who bought the decrepit 83-year-old building surrounding the Rialto Theatre for $800,000 and intends to restore its second-floor apartments and install a restaurant, “high-class saloon” and unique retailers at street level.
Biggers co-founded the Tucson Weekly in 1984, and as publisher focused the paper’s news and arts coverage on Downtown. Although keeping the paper alive had always been a financial struggle, Biggers sold the operation in 2000 for a handsome but undisclosed sum that allowed him to set his life on any course he wished. Although early rumors had him sailing into the sunset off the coast of San Diego, Biggers soon resolved to remain in Tucson, where he’d lived since he was 10. “So I thought, if we’re going to stay, what am I going to do with myself?” he says. “So I committed to Downtown revitalization as a career.” Investing $50,000 in the Rialto Theatre turned out to be his first step toward acquiring a significant chunk of East Congress Street.
- Biggers’ partners, Tom Warne, Don Semro and Yoram Levy, who are collaborating on Depot Plaza—the vastly improved residential and commercial area to grow out of the present Martin Luther King subsidized housing—and have optioned much of the block directly across Congress from Depot Plaza, from 5th Avenue to Arizona Avenue.
While much of the talk about Downtown investment right now concentrates on such novelties as museums and residential development, Warne is a heavy hitter in the field in which Downtown’s fortunes have always risen and fallen: commercial enterprise. Warne, who specializes in urban infill rather than suburban strip malls, is proudest of his Main Gate project at Park and University, bringing a much-needed cluster of retailers and cafés to the sagging doorway of the University of Arizona. In college, Warne had majored in economics and studied political science and government; he then went into retail, and soon he realized that a career in commercial development would bring together all his interests. The Main Gate project required Warne to collaborate with the UA, neighborhood groups, the Marshall Foundation and city staff and elected officials, while working in a historic area—exactly the kind of blend of interests with which he must deal in his Downtown ventures. “It means building consensus, trying to fit the need with the product, and getting everyone on board,” he says of his work. Warne spends every weekend in Seattle with his family, but his work week is here, and he remains a committed Arizona resident.
- Tom Doucette, who plans to build 150 single-family homes and duplexes on 17 acres off Starr Pass Boulevard, just west of Interstate 10, and sell them for $110,000 to $160,000.
- John Wesley Miller, mastermind of the new, elegant, energy-conscious, pedestrian-oriented Armory Park del Sol development in Armory Park, historically inspired homes on long-empty land near the railroad tracks.
Born in Missouri, Miller came to Tucson with his family in 1948, when he was in ninth grade. “We left Kansas City on a train when it was 7 below zero, and got here at 2 a.m. the next day, and my father was in shirtsleeves,” he recalls. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” He learned carpentry from his father and worked into the construction business “from the ground up, by washing windows and digging ditches; then after a while they let me pound nails.” Miller studied electrical engineering at the UA, but decided he preferred construction. He built his own home in 1953; he’s built about 1,000 more houses since then. He also served as a consultant on Biosphere 2, where among other things he supervised the center’s use of solar power. Harnessing the sun for domestic use has long been Miller’s specialty. In 1981 he dreamed up the “solar village” that became Civano; he chaired the state solar energy commission under four governors; and he spent 20 years on the board of the National Association of Home Builders Research Center, which develops and certifies products for energy efficiency and structural integrity. Through all this, Miller says he bases his work on principles he learned from his father: “Quality comes first, productivity comes second, but it had better be a damned close second.”
- Warren Michaels, Phil Lipman and architect Rob Paulus, who are converting the 80-year-old Arizona Ice and Storage building into 51 tony residences called the Ice House Lofts, and will soon break ground just to the south on Barrio Metalico, nine two-story single-family homes in a highly contemporary design.
Michaels became a real estate agent in 1974, right out of high school, and immediately got into what he calls “rehabs.” “I always found it satisfying, taking a property that was more or less derelict and creating a new home for somebody, an exciting new living space that fits in with the style of the neighborhood,” he says. He started this in Miami, then moved to Chicago, and wound up in Tucson five and a half years ago. “I’m in love with Tucson,” he says, particularly the cultural diversity and architectural richness of Barrio Viejo. Like Warne, Michaels loves working with teams of architects and builders, and like Miller, he started out living in the houses he worked on. He’s not just a romantic; Michaels says the biggest lesson he’s learned in his business is a hard one: “I learned that if you haven’t lost money in real estate, you haven’t been in it long enough. It’s very risky, and eventually you’ll get into a deal where you won’t make any money, which to me is the same as losing money.”
- Rio Development Co., a large team that includes, among others from out of town, developer Justin Dixon; builders Dante Archangeli and Eric Freedberg of Milestone Homes, Jim Gray of Adobes del Bosque, Michael Keith of Contemporary West Development and Tom Wuelpern of Rammed Earth Development; and designers William Walker and David Little of The WLB Group. They successfully bid $1.475 million on 13 acres along Congress just west of the freeway, where they will build retail shops and about 200 homes in a variety of historically oriented designs.
Keith grew up in a Tucson tract home, but spent many nights during high school breaking into soon-to-be demolished old houses Downtown, just poking around and developing a love for their architecture. In the 1980s, after five years of applying his U.A. degree in international relations to several jobs in the Middle East, Keith returned to Tucson, and, he says, “decided that restoring and reviving these neighborhoods was the right thing to do.” Most recently, he’s been building energy-efficient but historically-informed Sonoran row houses in the barrio.
Wuelpern studied architecture at the University of Michigan, then enrolled in Arizona State University to pursue work in environmental planning and solar technology. He first heard about rammed-earth construction in 1980, and decided that was the most appropriate building material for Southern Arizona homes. His aesthetics were influenced less by the postmodern techniques he learned in school than by travels in Mexico, where, he says, “I learned more about architecture and how people integrate with it. I define successful architecture as something that’s being used and appreciated by as many people as possible. In our modern society, as we get more technology in our lives, people are simultaneously looking for more grounded experiences in how they live. In our developments Downtown, we want to see people on their feet and socializing, and so we want to create the housing and retail backdrop that supports that activity, but in a way that’s rooted in our area and our cultures. We do custom houses scattered all over Pima County and other counties, but it’s in my work and living in the barrio over the last 15 years that I’ve really gotten to see and feel how buildings in an urban environment where houses are closer to the street can positively and negatively affect how people relate to each other and their homes. We’re incorporating those principles into our work in Rio Nuevo.”
Obviously, these people intend to make money on their investments. But their financial optimism is linked to a certain idealism about downtowns in general and Tucson’s in particular, an idealism that seemed dead only 20 years ago.
“Any city worth being called a great city, not just a collection of sprawl, has to have an authentic core, a locus of the city’s culture, history, and architectural treasures,” says Biggers. “That core has to be made vital for the city to have a heart.”
There are practical reasons to invest in Downtown, too, as Warne points out: “There’s a mindset that has not been served in Tucson, where a growing number of people want to live in an urban setting; they want high ceilings but not a big suburban house with three cars and mowing the lawn all weekend. They want a different lifestyle. Downtown, because of its heritage and zoning, and because some historic buildings have not been demolished, gives the right feel for that type of development. Downtown can also provide entertainment, restaurants, jazz clubs—not just for the people who are moving here, but for all of Pima County. And the new Rio Nuevo tax financing was a catalyst, so the correct enforcement and infrastructure can be built that will encourage people to invest in downtown.”
“This is definitely an area that’s about to be reborn,” says Keith. “There are indicators everywhere you look: The people on the streets are different, there’s a different energy than there was five years ago, there’s a constant parade of vehicles up and down the neighborhood streets all week long, and the thousand and one little things that the City of Tucson has done that are really beginning to add up— the really cool bus stops they did, or the Broadway underpass, or the snake bridge to nowhere, or the removal of power poles along Main Avenue, the judicious use of Back to Basics grants, which has resulted in improvement of a façade here and the re-pouring of a curb there. It’s not something you can put your finger on, but it feels better somehow.”
“We’re making money,” says Miller with satisfaction of Armory Park del Sol. “The profits on our buildings are comparable to what we’d make building in another part of town. Was it risky? Three years ago a lot of my friends probably thought I was crazy. But the other day a guy told me, ‘Well now, John, you’re a visionary.’ I don’t know about that, but it’s nice to have a bunch of people moved in.”
Michaels, too, is seeing residents flock to his Ice House Lofts; 44 out of the 51 units are already reserved. Barrio Metalico, which hasn’t even broken ground yet, has only two homes left, and that’s even after Michaels boosted the initial price from under $200,000 to $249,000.
“My project in Barrio Viejo has been very successful, also,” he says. Five years ago, he bought a 320,000-square-foot lot at Main Avenue and 17th Street with a 100-year-old Territorial brick home on it for $170,000, and split the property into six lots. “The original house is now worth around $210,000,” he says, “the lots alone are worth around $100,000 apiece, and the homes that Caliber West, the general contractor, is building for me there are bringing $185 per square foot. Five years ago nobody I spoke to in the barrio would’ve believed that.”
City officials, of course, had their fingers crossed that this would happen, and initially tried to assure the outcome by closely supervising every detail of Downtown development. Only a few months ago, builders and developers were grumbling that the City was micromanaging the job, and nothing irks private investors more than government oversight. But now their attitude is almost entirely positive. They give high marks to City Manager James Keene and especially to Assistant City Manager Karen Thoreson, as well as to Rio Nuevo project manager John Updike and the Back to Basics financial boon from the office of Mayor Bob Walkup.
“There’s a different mentality now,” says Wuelpern. “They recognize that you get your Downtown revitalized by doing things with zoning and design that are different from traditional Tucson form.”
Not everything is completely smooth. Miller, for example, is irked by the legal wrangling that has delayed if not entirely squelched the fee waivers for permits the City promised some years ago. “It adds up to probably $60-80,000 that would’ve been nice to have at this point,” he says. “At 99 new homes, with waivers averaging 1,500 to 2,000 bucks, that would’ve been a big reduction in costs to our buyers, but we haven’t seen it except for the first two or three.”
“Once you prime the pump and you’re through that phase of public-private partnerships,” says Keith, “the City has to offer as many incentives as possible and get out of the way of the private sector, and let it do what it needs to do. I’m a private-sector builder that’s been struggling Downtown for 20 years, and I will never think there are enough incentives in place.”
That hasn’t stopped Keith and his fellow developers and investors from literally laying the foundations for Downtown’s revival. “My optimism,” says Biggers, “is based on a credible set of assumptions about what the City has committed to and what private developers are committing to; there will be $50 million of private-sector investment in the next three to six years.” In other words, no single investor is in it alone.
Optimism is fine, but is this truly the most opportune time to drop a wad of banknotes on Downtown real estate? After all, Walgreen’s is fleeing, there’s no conventional supermarket within walking distance (most people regard the well-stocked 17th Street Market as a specialty store), retailers that cater to everyday needs aren’t likely to move in until residential density increases, and many homeowners won’t move Downtown until their daily needs can be met by new retailers joining the souvenir, wig and fetish shops.
Yet the rapid sales in Armory Park del Sol and the Ice House Lofts, and the success of recent lot-by-lot construction, suggest that Downtown redevelopment has finally reached the tipping point.
Warne describes this period as “the leading edge” of Downtown investment opportunities. “The real estate values in housing are continuing to climb because they’re in higher demand,” he says. “So the snowball’s starting to get going.”
Keith is willing to predict the trajectory of that snowball. “First,” he says, “small individuals come in to a decaying area and put their sweat equity into saving it from further destruction, and then the city comes in and begins to do incentive programs to get bigger projects off the ground. And then come the larger, more visible projects, either privately funded or public-private partnerships.” That’s the point Downtown is now reaching. “And then when that public money dries up you see a lot of adaptive reuse, and ultimately that’s where the endearing character begins to occur. An icehouse becomes 51 condominiums, or the basement of an old building becomes a blues bar, or a warehouse district becomes an arts district. These small character-defining projects are the ones that bring the interesting people and the nightlife in.”
“For a small investor like myself,” says Michaels, “I don’t know anyplace else in the country where somebody could buy a building in the heart of Downtown for a few hundred thousand dollars. When I bought the building at 120 E. Congress three years ago, I paid $235,000 for it. It was incredible that I could go in and buy a building right in the heart of Downtown for such a small price. I think those same opportunities are still there; the potential to convert some of these buildings into the next level of retail and mixed use is there. The residences Downtown will be critical to making it happen, because once the residences are there, then the better-tier retail stores and restaurants will come in.”
“People who don’t get involved now are going to kick themselves,” says Wuelpern. “When I started working down here with Michael Keith, this was the only place we could afford to buy land. Friends said, ‘You guys are nuts; you’re wasting your money.’ Now I can’t tell you how many times every month my friends say, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t listen.’ But they haven’t missed the train; the train’s just pulling out of the station. It’s not too late. The values of homes here will increase at a much higher rate than the homes in the foothills.”
“I think the best time was about 10 years ago or more, when things were really at the bottom, and people were getting tired of paying taxes on nonproductive land,” counters Miller. “So today is better than next month or next year, because the values are going to start running up. If you want to be part of the renaissance of Downtown Tucson, you’d better get on the bandwagon now. There’s not that much land left down there, and not that many buildings you can buy. We’re looking for other opportunities, and they’re hard to find.”
“It’s now or never,” Biggers agrees. “Tucson has one more shot at it; if we don’t succeed this time, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. But things are lining up. Finally the City has made the context right, so that if the private sector steps in, it will ignite something that will explode.”
