Rio Nuevo Special Meeting cancelled

On Monday July 21, at approximately 8:30 am, the Rio Nuevo District Board sent out an announcement for a Special Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, July 23 at 9:00 am. On Monday, at approximately 2:30 p.m. the Rio Nuevo District Board sent out an announcement cancelling the meeting.

Between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., Rio Nuevo Board members were contacted by members of the community who were shocked that the Board would be reckless with the future of the Gem Show and appear to return to the old crony days that have haunted the District for years.

The Rio Board, despite objections, scheduled a meeting to hear from competitors for the sale of the District’s Arena Site. The agenda read: “The Board will hear presentations from and interview the two proposers on the Arena Site RFP. The Board members will score the proposers based upon these presentations/interviews and create a final ranked list by combining the proposal and interview scores.”

Despite having received purchase price offers, and having scored the proposals by Norgen, owned by Allan Norville, a founder of Tucson Gem Show, and Peach Properties, some Board members wanted to add an extra hoop through which to jump; forcing the competitors to be scored based on their presentation to the Board on Wednesday.

With little more than two days’ notice, during the month of July when many professionals are out of town, the competitors were told that they would have to gather their financial partners, architects, business partners, etc and make a presentation to the Board. The presentation would be scored and those scores would be added to the previous scores.

According to sources, this move was designed to benefit one competitor, who had received the lower score in the earlier action. That competitor had offered less money for the property and received a lower score by Board members in the earlier review.

When local business interests got wind of the maneuver, they began crying foul.

Board members Chris Sheafe and Fletcher McCusker, who had previously recused themselves from any votes related to Peach and Scott Stiteler, did not recuse themselves from the scoring process.

Had the new round of scoring succeeded in stacking the deck, and Peach had been given an unfair advantage, the Gem Show would be at risk. Without the Arena property, the project that Norville had been planning to build to save the Gem Show would be at risk.

Peach has proposed building low rent “affordable rate units” for the downtown workforce across from the luxurious exhibition hall Norville has been planning for years.

The proposal reads:

“Our proposal includes 320 residential units. The residences will provide needed workforce housing, at market rate, with an additional number of affordable rate units. The residential units and retail terrace down towards Granada and Cushing to be sensitive to the residential scale of the El Presidio Neighborhood to the south.”

Norville’s plan for the Arena Site included the parking the City of Tucson demanded as well as a hotel, museums and retail space.

Without the necessary parking, and with low-income housing, it is unlikely Norville would be willing to invest the $100 million plus on an exhibition hall.

Norville’s proposal is the only project proposed to date that would come close to a development that would closely match the $230 million squandered over the years by Rio Nuevo and City of Tucson cronies. Not to mention the higher tax revenues that would be generated by the retail shops and hotel of the Norgen project.

If one were to throw out the high score for each of the proposals to eliminate potential bias of board members, the Norgen proposal had 100 more points than the Peach proposal.

Notes:
(1) Units face El Presidio Neighborhood will be sensitive to residential scale to the south
(2) Museums, exhibition and artistic centers
(3) Includes access to state parking garage via foot bridge