Mesa to expand METRO, extend its downtown May 19th, 2010
From the East Valley Tribune:
Mesa has struggled for years to make its mile-long downtown vibrant, but a new light rail segment is triggering calls to extend the city’s urban core by several miles.
Key city officials say they want to expand the downtown-style streetscape at least two miles to the west, where the Metro system now ends at Sycamore Street.
Nick Davis, whose family owns the Citrus Grove trailer park, [said] “Main Street is ripe for redevelopment if light-rail is built on it and the city incentivizes it. I honestly believe that it can happen if you have a real downtown in Mesa, something that people are really proud of and proud to go down to.”Davis said he was a skeptic of light-rail’s redevelopment potential until watching new businesses sprout up after the initial 20-mile segment opened in late 2008. His family owns a plaza in Phoenix at 4700 N. Central Ave., which is south of Camelback Road. Davis said that part of Central enjoys much of the life that downtown Phoenix has, demonstrating a large amount of redevelopment can take place over a wide area.
The economy could make redevelopment tougher now, but Davis said he’s encouraged by how quickly light-rail improved an area he recalls as lifeless growing up in the 1980s and ’90s…
Dated 2010-05-17. Rest of the story here.
