The Cloth Curse

When it comes to economic and downtown development, Tucson appears to be suffering from some kind of curse that prevents sound thinking and energy genuinely directed towards improving the community. The well meaning and competent are destroyed, over and over again, while the self-serving, corrupt, or inept continue to be rewarded. At least when Robert Gonzales (and later, Steve Weathers) ran GTEC, its performance was reviewed and if it tried to take credit for the results of others, they were called on it. TREO could take credit for Obama stimulus funds and council members would smile and applaud. As bad if not worse, we have the devolution of the functional Downtown Alliance, a productive organization that generated numerous community events and other services, into a worthless crony capital for six figure do nothing Clothmeister gigs while it continues to connive to get paid more to do less.

Now we learn of the Downtown Tucson Development Company (DTDC) and its delicious scenario slated to occur via what has to be either corrupt or appallingly incompetent, or as the curse goes, both. ITB has the expected soft treatment piece, but the deal has all the stench of Rio Nuevo’s $9 M imaginary bridge.

Donovan Durband, Director of the Downtown Alliance before the Cloth boondoggled the place into the thrice budgeted nonperforming Lyons DTP, has a thorough and well written blog post via the new online Tucson Citizen, and the Star has an opinion piece suggesting, "Whoa!" to this deal, and for good reason.

Also crying foul, Rialto Theater President Michael Crawford wrote an email to the Mayor and Council pleading that they defer approval of the document implementing the deal until it is fully understood. What a concept. The Star piece referenced his email and clearly had a copy. Those interested in reading it verbatim can view a simple web page of Crawford’s Letter here.

I don't know why Tucson suffers from such a curse. The likes of Snell, Lyons, Barr, LaSala, and even Hecker are probably opportunists happy to inhale the greatest $Ka-Ching! possible when they see a butt bent over a railing. The causal elements are more likely to include names like Eckstrom. At any rate, Albuquerque, Portland, Austin, San Diego (the list goes on) provide examples of communities free of having their economic and downtown development efforts focused on funneling millions to a small group of anointed insiders. You do know the DTDC organized fundraisers for some of our city officials.