An Urban Land Institute team arrived in Tucson last week and, after a thorough review of downtown and the adjacent west side, came up with a brilliantly ironic idea:
Raze La Placita Village in the name of urban renewal.
It’s ironic, of course, because La Placita Village was one of the projects built, about 40 years ago, on the ruins of a Mexican-American barrio razed in the name of urban renewal. The Tucson Convention Center and adjacent buildings also took the barrio’s place, leaving a residue of anger that lingers today.
The leader of the institute’s team, Dallas developer John Walsh III, said they heard about the disputed history of the area during interviews with dozens of Tucsonans last week, but they decided La Placita Village is limiting downtown’s potential in the modern-streetcar era.
They imagine the southwest corner of West Broadway and South Church as a plaza that connects cultural sites from the Tucson Museum of Art on the north to the Museum of Contemporary Art on the south, with a concert hall and theater in between.
“We just think it’s an impractical use of that property, not a highest or best use,” Walsh said.” We feel like the life of the existing La Placita is expired, or if it hasn’t expired, it’s close to expiration.
“La Placita is at an important juncture in the streetcar route,” he said. “It’s got some value.”
It’s just that the value isn’t necessarily in its current use as a brightly colored, slightly run-down, difficult-to-navigate office complex.
There is one hitch, of course: La Placita Village is private property, owned by HSL Properties. And there’s a drawback attached to the hitch: HSL’s president, Humberto Lopez, has become notorious for driving hard bargains, letting properties deteriorate to the point of closure rather than cutting a deal with the city. (See: Hotel Arizona.)
The Urban Land Institute team consulted with Lopez and HSL’s executive vice president, Omar Mireles, before making its report. And Mireles told me HSL is definitely into the idea of redeveloping La Placita, but making it into a plaza seems divorced from realities such as how to pay for such a change.
“That’s obviously a big missing piece of the puzzle,” Mireles said.
HSL is looking into new ideas for redeveloping the adjacent, closed Hotel Arizona, and its plans for La Placita Village would follow those plans for the hotel, which should be ready in the first quarter of 2014, he said.
“Certainly a redevelopment is in store,” Mireles said. “Ultimately we do think that the property has to be redeveloped, repurposed, from the office use.”
For the Arizona Daily Star, there’s another complicating factor: We’ve long had an office in La Placita Village. I spent my first six years at the Star working in that office and returned here again this year. Although I’m sitting in that office as I write, that doesn’t mean I have much affection for the complex, except for its beautiful placita.
It’s almost comical to realize, as I make my way through La Placita’s confusing back alleys, that it was intended to be a modern retail hub that reflected a touch of “Old Mexico.” In other words, it was to be a sanitized version of the gritty piece of mexicano culture it replaced.
To help heal the wounds of the old neighborhood’s destruction, and in honor of Tucson’s penchant for grand plans, here’s a new, original proposal that would surely maximize the potential of the La Placita Village corner: The Historic Barrio Theme Park and Tucson Urban Plan Museum.
The theme park would re-create barrio life the same way Disneyland’s Frontierland reimagines the Old West. Maybe we could even hire a Disney Imagineer to run it! Thrilling yet historically plausible attractions might include a make-your-own tortilla factory and a light-your-own-candle religious shrine. Re-enactors in feathers and garter belts could re-create Gay Alley, the one-time red-light district in the area.
Just over the imaginary Rainbow Bridge, the Tucson Urban Plan Museum would celebrate our city’s rich history of dreaming up big plans only to shelve them. This museum would provide all the necessary shelves! It would also, ideally, have a charette annex, available for all our future civic-visioning exercises.
When I mentioned my idea to Nicole Ewing Gavin, the assistant to the city manager who organized the institute’s study, she didn’t take me very seriously. I think she actually laughed at me! (So did Mireles, for that matter.)
She insisted the idea would be to open up this corner and create the cultural plaza Walsh described. Another part of the idea: The University of Arizona could move some of its warehoused collections to a La Placita area for display, and perhaps could move some of its artistic academic programs to the area.
It might work — but if it doesn’t it would be a great addition to the Tucson Urban Plan Museum.
