A recent chirpy story in the Arizona Daily Star was about a new endeavor between Tucson’s Rio Nuevo downtown redevelopment district and the athletic department of the University of Arizona (UA). The district will pay the university $100,000 a year to market downtown Tucson and to encourage sports fans to eat and drink at certain downtown spots.
Rio Nuevo’s message to bars and restaurants outside of the district: Go pound sand!
UA’s message to the city’s poor: Go eat cake, or, alternatively, have a $50 meal and a $12 drink downtown.
The story brings to mind the award-winning book “Bad City.”
The book is a testament to investigative journalism, which is a rarity nowadays in US newspapers. It details the dogged determination of an investigative reporter for the L.A. Times in exposing a crime and the sordid lifestyle of the renowned head of the medical school at the University of Southern California.
The reporter had to prevail against the longstanding practice of squelching bad news about USC, due to an unholy alliance between USC, the City of Pasadena, the Pasadena police department, and the reporter’s own newspaper. Years earlier, the Times had published an expose on the USC football team, but only because the misdeeds were too overt to cover up.
What does this have to do with Tucson?
It is not to suggest that Tucson’s powerful establishment of Rio Nuevo, UA, local media, and the one-party political monopoly that runs the city and county are in cahoots to cover up criminal activity. But it is to question whether it is healthy for so much coordinated cheerleading to be taking place among these unified powers, when hundreds of millions of public dollars are sloshing around.
It’s usually not good when watchdogs over the public purse become lapdogs of those who depend on the public purse.
The story quoted Rio Nuevo Vice Chairman Edmond Marquez, who criticized Texas Tech and the University of New Mexico for not having a connection to their downtown, as he wants UA to have to downtown Tucson.
Texas Tech is located in Lubbock, Texas, and the University of New Mexico is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Are these the kind of cities that Marquez and the rest of the Rio Nuevo board use as a basis of comparison?
Well, they have a point. Tucson and Lubbock have the same high rate of poverty, and Albuquerque is ridden with high crime and widespread seediness, as is the case for many of the Tucson neighborhoods that are in close proximity to the Rio Nuevo redevelopment district.
Albuquerque is a city that once had a burgeoning tech industry but became an economic backwater through bad governance and unfavorable demographics. Still, its poverty rate, although high, is three percentage points lower than Tucson’s, even though the University of New Mexico is not connected to downtown Albuquerque.
Meanwhile, Stanford University is not connected to downtown San Francisco, and, instead, is located in Palo Alto, a suburban center of innovation and prosperity, where the median household income is $220,408 and the poverty rate is miniscule.
At the same time, the main campus of the University of Washington in Seattle is 13 miles from Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered, where the median household income is $162,099, and where 75 percent of residents over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Similarly, two hours up the interstate from Tucson is Scottsdale, which doesn’t have a four-year university within its city limit but is quite prosperous and known for superb eateries, attractive amenities and entertainment venues, and a thriving business climate, including companies that moved there and to other parts of metro Phoenix from Tucson.
There are scores of other comparisons that call into question the foundational belief of Rio Nuevo that downtown development and connections to UA will magically bring prosperity to Tucson.
The foregoing would make an interesting subject for investigative reporting. So would these questions:
– Has the redevelopment of downtown come at the expense of neighborhoods and simply shifted business to downtown from other parts of the city?
– Is it the mission of a land-grant university such as UA to spend taxpayer money on a money-losing athletic program while, at the same time, the university is screwing students through the tuition loan scam?
– Is it the mission of Rio Nuevo to give money to the athletic program?
– Why is the focus on low-wage bars and restaurants instead of high-wage industry further up the value chain? Why aren’t there promotional displays downtown that market Tucson to visitors as the home of 12,000 rocket scientists at Raytheon Missile Systems and as the location of one of the best charter schools in the nation?
– Why has UA spawned so few startups, technology transfers, and venture capitalists?
– Given the city’s poverty, crime, and poor upkeep, how does the political monopoly stay in power?
Someone should write a book on these questions. It could be titled, “Bad City Revisited.”
Mr. Cantoni can be reached at craigcantoni@gmail.com.
Here’s the most recent Crime Report from the Arizona based federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force (HIDTA) about the current major criminal organizations in Tucson;
https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs40/40381/40381p.pdf
Phoenix and Tucson Market Areas
“…The two major drug market areas in the Arizona HIDTA region, the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas, serve as staging areas and transshipment centers for cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine smuggled into the United States from Mexico. Moreover, they are the most noteworthy areas for illicit drug trafficking and abuse in the HIDTA region….”
“…Mexican DTOs dominate wholesale drug distribution in and around Tucson; however, gangs in Tucson also are
increasingly involved in all levels of drug distribution, primarily marijuana distribution. Law enforcement in the Tucson
area reports that Arizona street gangs and Mexican DTOs are cooperating to further the distribution of illicit drugs in the
area. According to the Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission (GIITEM), the largest street gang
in Tucson, Barrio Hollywood, and the Arizona New Mexican Mafia work together to transport large amounts of mari-
juana from the U.S.–Mexico border to Tucson for distribution within the city. Gangs based on tribal lands also are
involved in drug transportation and distribution on the reservations. According to the Arizona HIDTA, at least 28 gangs
operate on the Tohono O’odham Reservation alone….”
There’s a lot more info. Just click the above link to Arizona HIDTA Report.
Tucson I’ve visited for three years in a row now, I see a lot of potential, or perhaps wasted potential. The trolley is something of an inefficient hazard, and a novelty at best… Even Seattle, WA has a street level trolley and it too is a hazard, not utilized very heavily by commuters either, and was also extremely expensive ( wish they’d have paved a road or 20 for the cost.
Someone mentioned the tech sector leaving Tucson, that’s a shame, but after living for 11 years in Seattle and watching what Amazon, M.Soft, Google, etc. did to the home prices I see having them around has made life for the average guy a bit harder, priced out of houses, idiotic food and energy prices, and the roads still don’t get paved. Also the drug and homeless population has increased yearly.
Would hate to see Tucson turn into what Seattle has become, if done well/ right Tucson could really become much better than it currently is.
It’s a clean slate, as in not all f’d up yet. It would take 10 to 20 years of solid leadership/ leaders of the non corrupt variety. Keep prices low, there’s plenty of land to build on. Find out who’s corrupt in the education, local gov, and public utilities and root that BS out, sooner the better.
That West side of Tucson looks ripe for housing, I’ve read in your local papers about the Diamond Bell ranch development that never came to fruition, that could be developed.
All easier said than done, but it has to start with a vision/idea.
I do like it there in Tucson, very much. The people I met there are extremely friendly, and seem very genuine, quite the opposite of Seattle.
Sometimes things are better when they don’t change, there can be a sense of control lost over what was once predictable and recognizable.
At the end of the day, it’s a beautiful area, and at the very least the roadways should be properly resurfaced as a first step, nobody, a lefty or a righty likes potholes.
That botanical garden is really guite a nice spot too. And the women are very good looking there too.
Beer, chew, and gasoline is darn cheap too.
Gallon of gas in Seattle:$4.38/gal
1 Can of Grizzly:$10.04
1lb deli roast beef:$16.00
1 pepperoni pizza:$32-$40.00 depending on place
Life is just a lot nicer when you can fill your tank, have a nice chew and not feel like you’ve broken the bank.
And another thing, keep out of state lobbyists or any lobbyists out, I dated a woman for a time up here whose job it was to go down to energy companies and twist their arm to do all kinds of foolish environmental things, just silly, they didn’t make sense the things this lobby firm was pushing. Have to get the corruption out, and lobbyists breed corruption where ever they go.
I sure got off topic, but I hope you all stay motivated there in Tucson and get things going in the proper direction. You’ve got the makings of something great, just have to navigate through the corruption and get some motivated leadership that isn’t trying to get rich via their position.
Take care, and let the fools eat $50/meals in the fancy district, one can cook a better meal at home anyway.
This guy is a dreamer from Seattle – looking for miracles?
The socialist Democratic party.
Good job!
I’ve lived in Arizona 56 years. Twenty-five years in Phoenix, two in Prescott, eighteen in Flagstaff and eleven in Tucson. I moved to Tucson when I retired to be with my family, some of whom still live on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation, most in Tucson. This is the most badly governed place I’ve lived in Arizona, mismanaged top to bottom, bad public schools,and areas that look like Tortillia Flat. There is also a strong undercurrent of racism against the Apache people in the city, that I’ve seen manifested on a number of occasions. I’ve advised several people not to move here.
Cry baby conservative comments of course ignore the writers flat out racist take on what makes a successful city
more white men !
Oh, well l guess you are ultra liberal, a Democrat and a flaming gay! (sigh). Tucson is a
shithole.
It isn’t Marxism. Which is what Tucson and pima county leaders envision
Hey Gerald,
Why do Liberals always use the well- worn accusation of Racism, when not one post above referenced a specific Race?
Please read the HIDTA Drug Crime Report about Tucson and then tell me how can a factual crime report be racist?
To all of you that live within the City, I sure hope you are voting a big NO on Prop 414. You think the City wastes $$ now, just wait!
Look at the streets of Tucson, that tells us how little the governing bodies care.
Item one of note ; Texas Tech in Lubbock – is in a ‘dry county’ no alcohol sold – you have to go to the ‘county line’ where there is a line of alcohol vendors in a row – you can buy – take your alcohol to a restaurant and ‘they can serve you your alcohol’. For a fee. Just saying as a point of interest – Texas has “dry” counties.
Tucson – has been a good ol boy location – nothing has changed. Just thinking back to criminal organized crime in Tucson – “Try Tucson First” slogan with the pile of Kilo’s behind a VW BUS – does that continue to this day… with POT now legal – other drugs have replaced that ‘trade’? Or local industry? Look at any corner..
What’s industry in Tucson? The UA Tech sector – near I-10 / South 36th ? Became a call center haven with fast food and COSCO – ‘tech’? south Kolb ? Where IBM left town… asta lugo bimbo – UA – I’d never send a family member. Downtown? Did I get a ‘ticket’ or ‘need a permit’ otherwise.. NYET! Stop – eat and drink? lots of other taco shacks to stop at.. finding the secret new locations – a Tucson past time is it not- there are some gems. Been here since downtown was downtown.. now its just DOWN Town… where’s that hotel they said they were going to build?
Amount of government dollars financing the Leftists in Tucson is shocking. Chamber of Commerce RINOs have known for years but do nothing as long as they get theirs.
Agree with the old adage, follow the money. Rio Nuevo and the U of A have already screwed the city out of millions of dollars on the failed downtown redevelopment. Please remember the money spent by the U of A from Rio Nuevo on the trips to the EU to see what they could bring back and incorporate into the city. Nothing ever materialized and the U of A never reimbursed Rio Nuevo for the money. SSDD in liberal land. They are going to try the same scam again.
Now we know why the ‘street car’ was heavily pushed by Tucson’s City Fathers; free travel for drunken kids attending UofA to and from downtown bars. All at the added expense of Tucson’s mentally deficient citizenry.
Trolley actually started with hobbyists rebuilding old cars (themselves) and building track (themselves) to have a track to run their hobby cars on real ‘self built tracks’ … just before the 90 MILLION DOLLARS WAS FOUND – THE BRASS RING ADDED TO THE BRASS TIT! and ‘we’re off to the UA and PUBLIC HOUSING – maintenance is a drop in the bucket to the millions more in coming retirements for the employees – is that now being paid for the FREE RIDE EXPRESS… as is the BUS SYSTEM – the AC EXPRESS !