You might not expect the death of a municipal parking administrator to set off a period of deep public mourning.
But if you go downtown, you’ll see Donovan Durband’s name on all three theater marquees — the Rialto, the Screening Room and the Fox. And if you were downtown on Saturday night, you saw an outdoor stage named after him, too. You may see other memorials around town or on your social media, as well.
Durband was the Park Tucson administrator for more than 11 years, yes, but that was just the most recent expression of his enduring passion. For more than two decades, since the downtown Tucson doldrums of the 1990s, he poured everything into improving it.
Durband died unexpectedly of an unknown medical condition on June 3 at age 58. I was on vacation out of state when it happened and had to look at Facebook again and again to be sure what I was reading was true. I got to know him in 2003 when I was reporting on efforts to redevelop downtown and would run into him occasionally over the years, usually on the sidewalks in the center of town.
Durband has been such a fixture downtown, often in the background but other times out in front, that nobody who has been around can quite believe he’s left the scene. His quiet, tireless effort to get things going will be hard to replace.
That he would become a fixture and fount of about Tucson of all places was hardly predictable. He was born, the fifth and last child in his family, in northwestern Iowa. He went to high school in Holland, Michigan and attended Northwestern University for a time before coming to Tucson and finishing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Arizona. That’s where the Tucson thing began.
He got interested in urban planning and earned a master’s degree in it from the UA. He and his wife Erin met in Tucson and married at the Arizona Inn in 1993.
One of the early sparks of interest in downtown was when he checked out the effort to revive the Fox Tucson Theatre in the mid-1990s.
“We became fast friends immediately, and we spent the next 20-some years being friends and collaborating on things,” said Herb Stratford, who led the revival of the Fox. “Any project I was doing downtown, he was just involved in, because he was involved in everything.”
But in the 1990s, downtown Tucson was hardly a promising prospect to make your lifetime passion. When he took over as executive director of the Tucson Downtown Alliance in May 1999, one of the newest businesses was a Hells Angels storefront called Loco 81 on South Sixth Avenue. Four months later, federal agents raided the place, seizing weapons and ammunition and arresting the leader.
Nevertheless, Durband saw promise and boned up on the history. By the time I met him in 2003, he could tell me all about Jacome’s and Levy’s, stores that hadn’t existed for years, as well as the history of various blocks and buildings.
Erin Durband said that was a function of his burgeoning passion for the history of downtown: "He would spend hours at the historical museum looking at maps and figuring out what was there, what needed to be preserved, what we could bring back that would honor the past."
Michael Crawford, a former City Council member who helped him get that job, recalled that characteristic as well.
“He had this historic of everything downtown. I would call him up and ask, ‘what about this building — who owns it, who owned it?’ He had a photographic memory about that sort of thing.”
Durband left the alliance in 2009 and joined new council member Steve Kozachik’s staff. By this time, Rio Nuevo was stumbling forward and there were halting signs of improvement downtown. Durband came up with a new concept.
Downtown interests had previously held a monthly gathering to pump life into the area. In early 2010, Durband and others revived the idea. They called it “Second Saturdays” and launched it that summer.
Mia Schnaible, who was part of the group that organized the event and kept it going, said the success of the first night surprised them: 6,000 people showed up.
“Because of Donovan and the 2nd Saturday idea, we got new people downtown,” she said. “It was really cool to see how this event changed how people came downtown.”
Even after he took the job as parking administrator in 2012, Durband remained deeply involved downtown, through his job and outside it.
He co-founded the Festivals and Events Association of Tucson and Southern Arizona, Schnaible said. Then he spearheaded an effort to get Tucson recognized as a World Festival and Event City in 2017.
He helped out with the Arizona International Film Festival, Film Fest Tucson and many other events people dreamed up for downtown and other parts of Tucson. He worked methodically and with good humor, connecting people and solving problems, especially as they related to parking — an area where he was proud of the city's innovations.
During the pandemic, he helped restaurants downtown expand into areas that were parking places, so they could have outdoor seating.
After Erin, his wife, took up selling Pappardelle’s Pasta in 2014, each of them would go to different local farmers' markets on the weekends, too. He was tireless in engaging with Tucson.
“He was so proud of it (Tucson),” older sister Stephanie Durband Doeschot told me. “He loved it and would brag about it to his family members in the Midwest. He loved the city so much.”
A celebration of Durband’s life is scheduled for noon on Saturday, June 24 at the Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.
Of course, nothing would honor his life so much as for local people to go downtown, patronize the businesses and enjoy the scene he helped create. And if you drive, think of him when you pay for your parking.
Heirloom Farmer Markets' weekly offerings at Rillito Park near the Chuck Huckelberry Loop can be found every Sunday morning. The market's current hours are 8 a.m. to noon.
