Tempe Town Lake has changed rapidly since it was filled in 1999.
Though concept naysayers seemed to come out on top for a time, land around the lake is now some of the most valuable in the city.
In the past nine years, private property within the 743-acre district that surrounds the lake increased in worth to $93.6 million, from $15.4 million, according to county records.
Prominent signs of change include the Tempe Center for the Arts, a taxpayer-funded project that is scheduled to open this fall, and ever-taller condos that are sprouting up on the north and south sides of the lake. There are plans for a number of luxury hotels and high-rise office buildings. Companies are swapping cushy digs in established areas such as Phoenix’s Camelback Esplanade for new places on Tempe Town Lake.
It wasn’t always that way. When the lake was completed in 1999, much of the surrounding shores were barren. The Papago Riding Stables and Tempe Beach Park were there, but other acreage was "largely vacant and underutilized," said Neil Calfee, Tempe’s deputy community development manager.
Some of the land had been used for household and private landfills. Other lots were, and still are, being used for parking lots for Arizona State University.
When construction on the lake started in August 1997, it marked the end of 31 years of waiting from the time the project was hatched by a group of ASU students in 1966.
"Welcome to this historic occasion when we say to all, ‘We will build this dream together, and with partners old and new, we will stand strong together and say with confidence that Rio Salado is a reality,’ " then-Mayor Neil Giuliano said at a groundbreaking ceremony.
Giuliano and former Mayor Harry Mitchell were major backers of the Rio Salado plan. Meanwhile, current Mayor Hugh Hallman was one of the project’s most vocal critics. Hallman said he believed the city was taking a big risk with taxpayers’ money by building the lake without firm commitments from developers.
To an extent, those concerns held water. Plans for the first big-ticket development, a 1,000-room, $150 million Peabody hotel and convention center, eventually collapsed.
But since then, ever-present construction projects are sure signs that artists’ renderings are turning into actual bricks and mortar, and increasing land values prove the lake is developing into a cash cow for those who are willing to buy the land.
The lake is ranked as the third-most popular private tourist attraction in the state, according to the Arizona Office of Tourism. Only Chase Field in Phoenix and the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City have higher annual attendance, according to self-reported numbers.
Katie Nelson
The Arizona Republic
