Who's buying?

Some observations on the state of north Tempe:

Six years ago, on the corner of Ash and University, there used to be a co-op grocery store called Gentle Strength Co-Op. To meet large outstanding debts, they sold their lot to a developer, and moved to a new location much farther from campus on Broadway. They failed less than a year later, after 36 years in the Mill ave location. The developer bought the rest of the block and planned a luxury high rise condominium. A Whole Foods, a national chain and competitor to Gentle Strength, will be located in the street level retail space.
But not anymore. University & Ash Llc, who are developing the lot, are attempting to file for bankruptcy. Who did they think was going to fill these condos, students? I've never understood any of it.

Le Meridian Hotel was going to go into the Hayden Ferry Lakeside development, but later pulled out. The mystery is the upscale appeal of Tempe. Mill avenue and the area have very nice pedestrian scale, good food, and a good dense mix of eateries, shops, and events. But its not Rodeo Drive by any stretch of the imagination. I don't lament the loss of public space on the caricature of a lake as much as I dislike the way they're shrouding Tempe Butte, a.k.a. A Mountain. City buttes are important landmarks, and surrounding it with high rises makes the city less distinctive, not more so.

Who is supposed to buy the luxury condos in Tempe? I'm not a real estate agent or even reasonably informed in the matter, I am genuinely curious. Is it a winter home for the upper middle class? Late 20s DINKs looking for an "authentic" small town downtown? LA Execs looking for a getaway? Saudi Prince cowboy wannabes?

Too bad Mill is at the front door of ASU, and there's all these poor ASU students hanging around.
What can be done with the masses of students who can't afford Abercrombie & Fitch or Urban Outfitters? First step, remove cheap entertainment.

The Harkins Theaters, which helped transition Mill from a college student street to a main street, closed its doors soon after the Harkins at Tempe Marketplace opened theirs, two miles from campus. The Borders bookstore (similar story, stifling a few independent booksellers when it opened) has followed suit, citing falling sales, and probably from increased competition from Barnes & Noble, also at Tempe Marketplace. The Tempe Orbit, ASU's unofficial transit system, conveniently reorganized and extended its routes to ferry students too and from there as soon as it opened.

Seizing all empty lots in Tempe and fencing them or turning them into paid parking also helps keep out the riff-raff.

Directly across the street from ASU, in a single story pedestrian complex called "the arches," most of the stores, which used to hold a subway and a pita pit, as well as a barber and an alphagraphics, is closed, with the buildings destroyed. The only tenant refusing to make a deal is the owner of Dave's Dog House, who claims he still has 5 years left on the lease and is refusing to budge. If not for Dave's, the site would be totally razed and construction could proceed on "University Square," which is a mid-rise complex consisting of a Westin hotel, offices, and of course, a condominium tower.

Another small complex on Terrace road which contained a laundromat, an Indian restaurant which serves the sizable Indian community in the neighborhood, and a few other small stores was bought by Avenue Communities Llc, a major developer in the Tempe area. They purchased the Mill which gave Mill ave it's name, a 100 year old structure, and are going to turn it into thier new corporate offices. I've seen the plans for the building, and while I applaud the fact they're going to build around it instead of demolishing it, the small Terrace complex owners are complaining that the company is letting the complex fall into decrepitude so it can be torn down to make room for a high rise. They have forbidden the sale of the tenant spaces to other vendors, told the tenants that the building was slated for destruction. The city of Tempe seems to be working towards that aim as well- Hungry Howie's Pizza was forced to take down a sale sign in the window as "graffiti" while the real graffiti scrawled on the walls of the sides of the complex go unchallenged and unchanged.

In this little rant/post I'm coming off as extremely anti-developer, which is more than a bit hypocritical given my chosen profession. I'm not against development- I'm against development which does not serve its community. I believe in architecture that benefits the people who use it, and who interact with it. I applaud the CVS pharmacy on the corner of University and Mill. If the Gateway project, currently dead in the water from lack of investor confidence, would rise, I think that would really be a big improvement as well. Turning everything in a mile radius of the ASU into high rise condos and luxury boutiques does NOT serve the best interest of the students. Even more fundamentally then that, it disgusts me to see this kind of quiet chicanery. People need to know what's going on in their communities, and it's wrong to take advantage of the four year collective memory of the students.