You would have to be terminally stupid to close a massive real estate deal with ends still loose, and you would have to be brain dead to not have all your T’s crossed and I’s dotted if that deal included working with the rocket scientists on Tucson’s City Council.
So there was little surprise when savvy businessman Alan Norville balked at closing the downtown development deal with Rio Nuevo without securing an agreement with the City of Tucson that the relocation of the temporary Greyhound be under way before putting pen to paper.
The City of Tucson has been wringing its hands over any and all development – except that which is conducted by cronies – and Norville’s large exhibition center is one such project. He could have taken it – and the Gem Show – up the road to Phoenix and left Tucson inhaling the dust that fills the air from vacant land, but he stuck it out, and now he is stuck.
Where oh where can we move the temporary building – known elsewhere as a portable – to? We wouldn’t want to do anything in a reasonable period of time – that is not Tucson time. Tucson time is eons. Eons and eons involving a very exact and exacting process.
First you have to rile up all the neighbors that might be remotely effected by any development. Then, you need to figure out how much mordida the developer will have to pay before the neighbors will even look at the plans. Then you have to have the City crew find any and every reason why it should be rejected anyway. If you survive that, you are home free.
Recently, those who have grown weary of what has become known as the north-end mafia, started putting their heads together and devised a plan. What if you found a nearby location, owned by the City, that is ripe and ready for a portable? What if that land was large enough, and of so little value, that it could become a transportation hub – one that could replace the Ronstadt Center? What if that plot of land was located near neighbors, like the folks in Menlo Park, who hate any and all development, and near neighbors who fear gentrification, and both of whom value public transportation?
One portable, placed on City-owned land, with a parking lot and easy access to downtown, the freeway and Chuck Huckelberry’s proposed tourism center. Busses, both City and Greyhound, could move in and out easily without ever disturbing the neighbors and barely disturbing the earth.
Pshaw you say – it can’t be that easy. What’s the catch? None. Nada.
Directly across the freeway from the existing site of the Greyhound building sits an empty City-owned lot. Some neighbors had wanted development there, but others like the Roger Pfueffer/Diana Hadley crew of Menlo Park wanted nothing there and have been very loud about it. (The Pfueffer crew had said they wanted a desert park in the area, but since it is mostly an old landfill with volumes of methane boiling underneath, nothing will grow except buffelgrass and the homeless population.)
There were legitimate concerns, held by legitimate neighbors, about gentrification. Those types of neighbors are generally ignored by Tucson City Councilwoman Regina Romero, so they were never really a consideration by anyone with pull in the Old Pueblo any way. That is sad, but that is Tucson.
Norville’s Nor-Generations has until the end of September to close the deal, which includes the purchase of 8.5 acres of Rio Nuevo-owned land. Some on the Rio Nuevo Board are eager, according to sources, for Norville to fail. They can then hand the land over to buddies.
Those buddies will then build low income housing in order to pack the trolley line with dependent poor in need of a short ride. The poor will provide the trolley with a captive ridership that will have to transfer somewhere along the tiny route to make their way out of downtown to their three part-time minimum wages jobs at hotels and restaurants that are hanging on by a thread.
Hmmm let’s see: trap low income people downtown on a route to nowhere, or build an exhibition center that will save the Gem Show and the hotels and restaurants that thrive during its annual run? Tough call.
The Rio Nuevo Board signed a contract with Norville in January. Norville has done all that he was supposed to do. So far, he has paid for environmental site assessments, preliminary development plans and a hotel franchise agreement, according to the Arizona Daily Star’s Becky Pallack.
All he asked was that the City begin the process of moving the bus terminal upon closing.
Any sane businessman would make the same demand. Think about it: would you take possession of a house if the seller told you that they haven’t agreed to vacate it?
While Norville’s sanity is questioned because he hasn’t walked away from Tucson like everyone else, his commitment to Tucson is admirable.
Do the members of Tucson have such loyalty? Who knows. One of them won’t even live in her own Ward.
But, we shall see. The City Council is supposed to discuss/vote on the matter at their September 9 meeting. In a perfect Tucson world, Regina would calculate the necessary mordida beforehand so that the deal can close in a reasonable period of time and Tucson can get back to barely getting by.