At the top floor of the Security Building on Central Avenue and Van Buren Street in downtown Phoenix is a scale-model replica of our community’s urban core.
It is a fascinating overview in white, maroon and gray prepared by Arizona State University’s Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory.
The model’s white buildings represent what exists now. The maroon buildings are ASU’s soon-to-be-built downtown campus. And the gray ones represent other projects in progress or being planned.
The grays, appropriately, are the fuzzier, newer things – either too early in their construction phase or too early in their planning to be judged firmly a part of the new downtown. CityScape, the three-block, multi-use enormity that will redefine the Valley’s urban core, is represented in gray.
The model speaks of what is, what will be and what may be in this burgeoning place, where more than $3 billion has been spent in the last decade, and where billions more in new construction is anticipated. Its visual simplicity gives a sense of grandness.
The model does not speak to the human elements of the new downtown, however. That is something experienced only by being there. By seeing the colors and designs of what is new. And what we are seeing, in living color, is an urban springtime.
Downtown is blossoming. Sometimes radiantly. Sometimes in banal predictability. And what we are seeing happen now underscores our long-standing judgment about our downtown’s current transformation. It is this:
Downtown’s current evolution is the most important period of change in the urban core since George H.N. Luhrs completed his 10-story office building at 11 W. Jefferson St. in 1924. So, more than ever, we need to get it right this time.
And much that is happening has the feel of something right.
Open less than a year, the west building of the new Phoenix Convention Center is getting rave reviews. It is a marvel of reduction: a facility designed to serve hundreds of convention-goers at a time is surprisingly . . . cozy. Through a maze of lengthy escalators and broken up by clever use of carpeting and walls, it banishes the "people warehouse" feel that permeates most such centers.
Like many new buildings downtown, its façade incorporates a rust-and-cream "stone" appearance that has become a (usually) pleasant trademark in latter-day high-rises. The Arizona Center uses similar colorations. So too the Collier Center on East Washington, and others. If a design statement of early downtown Phoenix was art deco-style gray or brown granite (per that magnificent relic of our past, the proud, old Security Building), so the desert-ish rust-and-crème look is becoming a modern architectural standard here. As we said, it usually looks impressive.
But, sometimes not.
From an aesthetic point of view, the new city-owned convention hotel under construction now north of Van Buren Street between Second and Third streets has problems that other downtown projects, including other city developments, do not.
It is not just that this enormous 32-story project fills almost the entirety of its L-shaped footprint of land adjacent to The Arizona Republic building, though it certainly does. Rather, it is the looming – how to put this delicately? – drabness of this 1,000-room, high-rise hotel.
As a stand-alone mega-hotel on some isolated interstate freeway plaza? Sure. As a centerpiece of what should be the community’s downtown renaissance? Well, the look is lacking. In brief, it is pale, nondescript and entirely bereft of grandness.
The allegedly "decorative" rust-and-brown panels along the length of the crème-colored room tower evoke a woman’s cosmetic kit. Or the preferred color schemes of 1970s-era kitchen designs – those ugh-inspiring "earth colors," in other words. All that’s missing is a yellow shag rug.
City officials ask that critics – they would include us – resist coming to conclusions until the hotel is complete. Among its defining elements, they say, will be a roof that evokes Camelback Mountain. We’re skeptical. But we hope they are right that the hotel’s defining element is one we’ve yet to see. The ones we see now are not impressive.
Other area developments are making up for what the new convention hotel lacks in appearance, fortunately.
In particular, new residential developments in the center city are bringing real architectural diversity. Especially those within walking distance of the new light-rail system.
The Portland Place condos under construction on Portland Street between Third and Central avenues tastefully combine high-rise and a Phoenix variation on the New York brownstone. And the expensive Chateau residences at Palm Lane and Central make a dramatic Victorian statement with their red brick, copper and spires – a design throwback evoking the landmark Rosson House at downtown’s Heritage Square.
There are so many others. And that is the point. There was a time not long ago that it would be ludicrous to suggest that in downtown Phoenix you could find a profusion of anything save empty sidewalks and trash-strewn streets.
Now, we are seeing a profusion of new design, both proud and pedestrian. Let us have as much of the former as we can get.
Arizona Republic
