An odd land deal in Glendale
Another great story by the Republic’s Robert Anglen:
A controversial real-estate investor sold Glendale a piece of land for $6.6 million on the same day he bought it for about $5.5 million.
The land, which the city previously leased for a youth-sports complex and overflow parking near the University of Phoenix Stadium, was bought by the California investor and his wife from a Valley family on Dec. 21 and then sold to Glendale on the same day, according to interviews and property records obtained by The Arizona Republic.
The guy had a sketchy history:
Court records show that while serving as an elected member of the San Diego Board of Port Commissioners, [David Malcolm] was convicted of a felony charge of violating conflict-of-interest laws. He was working as a $20,000-a-month consultant to Duke Energy while helping the company win a contract from the San Diego board. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 120 days of work furlough, ordered to pay $260,000 in restitution and barred from holding elected office.
[…]
Malcolm was also investigated by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office after he was heard on a tape recording urging someone to blow up a house and collect $1.3 million in insurance money. He said he was play-acting during the discussion.
5:41 PM
What's the worst hotel in Phoenix?
A story by the NYT’s business traveler columnist, Joe Sharkey, today, got me thinking. It was about TripAdvisor.com’s lists of the world’s dirtiest hotels.
The NYT story is here. The list of dirtiest U.S. hotels is here.
I checked to make sure Phoenix didn’t have an entry, which it doesn’t.
But it did get me curious. Poking around on the TripAdvisor site, I actually couldn’t find the worst of the worst in Phoenix. The lowest ranking I could pull up was a list that began with “157 out of 175 hotels in Phoenix,” but then went up in ranking [i.e., in quality] from there. (It could be the site requires a minimum number of reviews.)
The worst hotels in town—according to the site’s users—are:
The Ramada Limited Airport North (“I see that many of these reviews are a few years old. Let me advise – this hotel is still awful.”)
Extended StayAmerica Phoenix Deer Valley (“If you’re looking for a hotel with a warm, friendly atmosphere, do not stay here.”).
and …
Traveler’s Inn on Latham on the west side (“On walking into my ‘non-smoking’ room, I was nearly blown back by the stink of smoke.”)
It should be noted that the prices on these places are correspondingly low, and that the ratings are the product in one case of as few as a half-dozen reviews. (I took out one of the lowest ones because the reviews were several years old.)
There were few venues downtown. One I noticed, the Artisan Hotel, but it had been taken over by an established chain. Embarrassingly, the San Carlos comes in at no. 114. Some of the reviews aren’t nice:
“The furniture looked like early pioneer meets the ’70’s and the bathroom was more than hideous”
“This place should be condemned!”
“The shower’s water pressure was equivalent to holding a small bottle of water and gently pouring it onto your head”
6:22 PM
J.D. Hayworth in the NYT
The anticipated challenger to John McCain’s Republican senatorial renomination this year gets a front-page profile ‘n’ pic in the paper of record today:
PHOENIX — J. D. Hayworth is a large man, and to compensate for his indulgences, he hits the elliptical trainer every morning at 4, zipping along to an incongruous soundtrack of Elvis Costello, Frank Sinatra and old advertising jingles.
The story, while noting McCain has support in the state, sums up his recently philosophical somersaults thusly:
Mr. McCain now finds himself jammed, moving starkly — and often awkwardly — to the right, apparently in an effort to gain favor among the same voters whom Mr. Hayworth, a consistent voice for the far right, could pull toward him like taffy come summer.
Mr. McCain now sharply criticizes the bailout bill he voted for, pivoted from his earlier position that the Guantánamo Bay detention facility should be closed, offered only a muted response to the Supreme Court’s decision undoing campaign finance laws and backed down from statements that gays in the military would be O.K. by him if the military brass were on board.
The story also notes that Hayworth himself is no prize:
Mr. Hayworth, a former sportscaster who rode the 1994 wave of conservatism into Congress, where he then served six terms, has political baggage. He was a very large recipient of both money and largess — like sports skyboxes — from the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. His loss to Harry E. Mitchell, a Democrat, in his 2006 re-election bid was humiliating, and underscored voter distaste for some of his more boisterous ways.
In interviews with roughly 20 Republican voters in Scottsdale and the conservative city of Gilbert, not a Hayworth supporter could be found.
6:54 PM
SMOCA shakeup!
One of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s senior curators, Claire Schneider, has been laid off. It’s a fairly significant loss for the museum, brought on by the continuing budget cuts that have already severely lowered the organization’s exhibition fund.
Sources in the museum say its new director, Tim Rodgers, was presented with the fait accompli of having to lose a senior position in the organization when he took the job late last year. (Director is the museum’s top position; Rodgers came from the Santa Fe Museum of Art.)
Schneider was for ten years a curator at the Albright-Knox, a contemporary art museum in Buffalo. She was brought to SMOCA in 2008 by longtime director Susan Krane, who a few months later left for San Jose. The museum had been without a director for a year, ending with the appointment of Rodgers in November.
Schneider, like many museum leaders, had been frustrated with the ever-contracting attention museums were getting from the mainstream press. She’d lately organized a periodic meeting between local curators and local writers and editors, PHXated among them, to discuss how local art institutions should attack that problem head on.
An Arizona Republic story on Schneider’s arrival in town here.
Her departure comes at a time of no little chaos in the Scottsdale city arts infrastructure of which SMOCA is a part. The museum, the performing arts center and a public art organization all exist under the umbrella of the city’s cultural council. The cultural center’s artistic director left after being on the job less than a year last month; a few weeks later, four of the cultural council’s board of trustees resigned en masse.
11:54 PM