TIF for TAT – Rio No Huevos

Tucson, Arizona. In what I would bet occurs as betrayal to someone, Mike Hein has decided that the $28M purchase and $47M renovation of the Hotel Arizona is “too expensive,” while dropping $17M for 6.7 acres of land and $200M for a new Sheraton is money well spent. Since when did cost effectiveness figure into any of these conversations? Until shown otherwise, I now find it impossible to avoid the conclusion that every decision is the one that either maximizes delay of actual expenditures or strokes one of the anointed cloth meisters.

The city is getting ready to pass its $1.3 B budget. We apparently don’t have enough money to fund a police force, but we can stuff the coffers of agencies like TREO and MTCVB with millions to pretend to make a difference in what? People coming to Tucson during the winter? People retiring in Arizona? Entrepreneurs building a warehouse, sweat shop, or Walmart in town to exploit the uneducated, slave wage workforce? I’m not saying we don’t need economic development or tourism agencies, but look at what those people get paid and what they actually produce. To really knock your socks off, take the freeway in either direction to another community and compare economic development results against agency budgets.

Now, oil and gas prices spiking to record levels (will only get worse) combined with the end of Eggplant’s suppression of scientific research will lead to unprecedented interest in green technology and alternative energy. The Southwestern United States is SolarCon Valley. The sun pours enough energy into Arizona and Southern California to run half the planet. People will notice and we are now looking at sooner as opposed to later. The University of Arizona, which has real research by real people leading to real results, has secured real grants to do things like go to Mars and conduct bio-medical research. I'll skip the cloth meister speeches taking credit for the work of others.

Tucson’s downtown needs a bookstore at least as good as the Border’s on Oracle or the Barnes and Noble in the Foothills Mall. It needs retail worth visiting and restaurants worth frequenting near the bookstore and a theater complex with over a dozen screens. The Congress Street Stakeholders understood this. Not long ago, Albuquerque and Tucson were pretty much the same when it came to matters downtown. Tucson got TIF and chose cloth. Albuquerque chose results and got them.

UPDATE: The more I think about this turn of events, the more it smells and the less I think the Andrea Kelly Star Article captures what is really going on. Cost effectiveness and proper pricing have nothing to do with this situation. Teya Vitu has another Rio Nuevo piece that is worth checking out.

This reeks of cloth. Perhaps more later.