At a recent family get together, Uncle John (his real name) was trying to talk my partner and I into moving our whole family down to Phoenix, Arizona and open a coffee shop with him. Apparently, the downtown core of Phoenix is positively booming and the lineups for a Starbucks is out the door and around the corner. It's not that we are necessarily top notch Barista entrepreneurs - we're not. He just likes having his family near by. You've gotta like the guy!Now, I'm not writing to you to aire my consistantly tough decisions (but if council doesn't do something to make downtown life here in Windsor better, I'll be Phoenix bound!), but to let you in on exactly why Phoenix is at the point where it is. In Uncle John's attempts to lure us to the land of 110-degrees-in-the-shade sunshine, we occasionally get emails from him with certain attachments that make us question why we're still in Windsor.
Read this article he sent us from the October, '07 issue of Phoenix Magazine and you will learn that the impetus to this downtown revitalization is eerily familiar to Windsorites, and not just because you've read a bit about it here before.
According to Phoenix City Councilman Michael Johnson, the big focus on their downtown started, ironically, with the failed effort to lure the Cardinals football stadium. "We weren't able to get the stadium, but as a result we ended up purchasing a lot of property, which became necessary when we started looking at ASU and the biotech campus".
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
I don't think I need to say any more. Now - call your councillor and ask him/her why we're sitting on this Downtown University Campus idea. Some of them need you to spell it out for them. What more proof do they need?
