Phoenix's Roosevelt Row
By Nicole Underwood and Greg Esser
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About this ebook
Nicole Underwood
Nicole Underwood is the Roosevelt Row CDC director of operations. Joey Robert Parks is a ghostwriter, social entrepreneur, and downtown advocate.Greg Esser is an artist and the founder of the Roosevelt Row CDC.
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Phoenix's Roosevelt Row - Nicole Underwood
book.
INTRODUCTION
Artists have had a dramatic impact on the evolution of downtown Phoenix.
Many of the murals, installations, performances, and events documented here are largely ephemeral and now lost to the myths of history. Today, many artist enclaves are being lost due to a rapid infusion of new market-rate housing and echoing a trend led by artists in cities all over the world. A significant distinction in Phoenix is that a remarkably high percentage of local artists have invested in real estate ownership, rather than simply renting.
As with many cities, suburban sprawl took a devastating toll on downtown Phoenix, as people, retailers, and finance moved to newer parts of the city. The opening of the Park Central Mall in 1957 was one of the first marks of this outward growth. Clint Eastwood’s film The Gauntlet provides cinematic views of the derelict and nearly empty downtown Phoenix of 1977.
The form of the urban core in the city of Phoenix has been shaped over time by policy and market forces. In 1972, Mayor Margaret T. Hance established the Economic Redevelopment Area—declaring all of downtown Phoenix blight. This declaration enabled eminent domain and other economic redevelopment tools to be enacted. Arizona is now the only state without the option of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to spur redevelopment. At the same time, a large area, from Fillmore Street north to McDowell Road, between Central Avenue and Seventh Street, was rezoned from single-story, single-family residential and mixed-use to High-Rise Infill Incentive
zoning. This rezoning placed entitlements to construct 25-story structures on acres still occupied by historic bungalows and single-story, mixed-use, and office buildings. This initiated an incremental process of building demolition and increasing land assemblage. Many buildings were lost to suspicious fires, or demolished by owners who refused to maintain their properties.
Land speculation, fueled by new high-rise zoning entitlements, drove land prices higher than the market could support. At the same time, developers were able to obtain variances that allowed higher densities north of McDowell Road, along Central Avenue, where land values were significantly more affordable. The swath of vacant land and boarded up buildings between the two higher-density areas of downtown Phoenix would become a canvas for artists in the mid-1990s, who began to envision what would become the Roosevelt Row Arts District. A key challenge, which would become an opportunity for Roosevelt Row in the 1990s, was an inventory of empty buildings and vacant land where structures were razed to make way for the promise of future development that never occurred.
Today, the entire spine along Central Avenue is now connected by the new light rail system, which opened on December 27, 2008. According to Valley Metro, the Arts District light rail station at Central Avenue and Roosevelt Street is one of the most heavily used stations along the entire system.
The unusually high percentage of artist property ownership in Roosevelt Row was the unintended consequence of artist displacement during the construction of two professional sports facilities. In the 1990s, Roosevelt Row was still characterized by crime and blight, and ownership was accessible to artists in need of an affordable space to create and display their work. Extensive prostitution, assaults, and open-air drug sales were a regular daily occurrence in the late 1990s. When portions of the area were targeted for demolition in 2002 to build a professional football stadium, artists and the community at large came together to advocate for the preservation of the arts in Roosevelt Row.
This disinvestment, coupled with land speculation and lot assemblage, resulted in the checkerboard of boarded up buildings and vacant lots that attracted artists. Some owners were receptive to allowing artists to occupy their properties rather than tear them down—often to avoid the cost of demolition. Other artists elected to purchase small properties and protect their sweat equity from future loss as the area improved. The lower cost of entry allowed for risk and innovation when it otherwise would not have been possible. It also fostered the critical mass of artist ownership that continues to define the