Radiate PHX's three-year anniversary is Tuesday
Catrina Knoebl’s monthly get-togethers bring downtown builders, business owners, activists, writers and thinkers to talk about the area’s future.
Tomorrow night marks the group’s third anniversary. The site is Cibo, at 5th Avenue and Fillmore, which among other things has great pizza. A note about the meeting on the Rail Life blog is here.
8:15 AM
"The Arizona Taliban"
One of the commenters on the Talton post I just mentioned, “azrebel,” deserves special mention for an observation he or she made:
I have a theory. I’ll call it the Arizona Taliban.
For those of you who have not spent time in rural Arizona, let me tell you, you have no idea how much rural Arizona hates “The state of Maricopa”. They hate eveything about the valley and they hate all the millions of “ants” who live in the valley. Over the years, some of the craziest legislative measures have come from rural legislators. When you group the rural kooks along with the east Valley Mormon kooks and the west valley ultra-conservative kooks, you have a majority which can by design or ineptitude do immense damage to the state.
The Afghan Taliban regularly do things which shout out to the world – we are ignorant, we are uneducated, we are mindless religious, fanatical robots, we have guns and we will kill you all.
The Arizona Taliban, don’t use guns, they use votes.
8:33 AM
PHXations—Monday, August 9, 2010
Gangplank, the Chandler idea incubator cum social space, got feature treatment in the Sunday EVT, complete with cute pix:
It’s the lede story on the site this a.m.
The AP is reporting that the anti SB 1070 protests helped boost hotel occupancy in Phoenix. Alas it was a small drop in the bucket compared with the impacts of the SB 1070 inspired boycotts:
The days leading up to Senate Bill 1070 were good for the hotel industry.
Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association spokeswoman Kristin Jarnagin says most downtown Phoenix hotels and a lot of other nearby hotels were filled with media, protesters and supporters.
Jarnagin says 2009 was the worst year on record with the hotel and convention industry losing 30,000 tourism jobs.
Jarnagin says boycotts cost the state at least $15 million and 40 conventions.
She fears those numbers will get worse given that conventions are booked years in advance and those groups may go elsewhere.
5:28 PM
Is a CVS drugstore downtown a big deal or not?
The store’s opening in the downtown development known as CityScape occasioned a big ceremony and something approaching a crowd yesterday, the RailLife blog reports](http://raillife.com/blog/2010/07/27/selling-drugs-on-light-rail/):
So, the big grand opening at the new CityScape CVS Pharmacy was this week and a whole slew of paparazzi, politicians and local folk gathered to celebrate the occasion. It was interesting to talk with some of the people that came to the opening. For the politicians and super-cool movers and shakers it seemed to have the air of “look what we are doing” down here.
The writer, Nick Bastian, goes on to say that he wasn’t impressed (yet), for reasons you can read on his post.
The CVS drug stores out here are, I"ve noticed, oddly clean, spacious, well-lit and friendly. My experience with them in the past has been on the east coast, where they are none of those things, and widely hated as a result.
That said, a place to buy a half-gallon of milk downtown has to be seen as a major landmark—and remember, this is a full half mile south of the Public Market.
7:03 AM
PHXations—Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Looks like the race to become Phoenix’s next mayor has (unofficially) begun:
Phoenix City Councilman Claude Mattox has yet to formally enter the 2011 Phoenix mayoral race, though he’s already claiming enough support from local political and business leaders to support a campaign.
Mattox… has raised $300,000 in contributions, according to a Tuesday press release paid for by the councilman’s exploratory committee.
His supporters include former Phoenix mayors Paul Johnson and John Nelson, in addition to Jerry Colangelo, former Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, and Salt River Project President David Rousseau, according to his camp.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon’s term expires in 2012. The city’s election for mayor is scheduled in August 2011, with filing deadline in June.
Maddox is the second prospective candidate to succeed Gordon, who can’t run again due to term limits. Peggy Neely, another current Phoenix City Council member, announced her intent to run for mayor in May.
The head of Fender is retiring.
After more than 30 years at the company, Chairman and CEO Bill Mendello announced Tuesday he will retire from Scottsdale’s Fender Musical Instruments Corp. later this year.
The company says a successor to the position of CEO was recently appointed by the board, but Fender is not yet announcing who that is. Mendello will remain on the company’s board.
12:16 PM
Jon Talton: The return of a native (of sorts)
Talton, a former Republic columnist and now a Seattle-based journalist and mystery writer, maintains a blog that has quickly become one of PHXated’s favorites: Rogue Columnist.
He’s back in town visiting, and has been posting some impressions. The first graf has a lot in it:
Traveling around Arizona, it’s difficult to imagine how the state can turn itself around, even if a majority understood the term. For most, a turnaround would mean a return to 40-percent population growth every decade, more sprawl, more “active adult resort living — with championship golf!,” more spec retail development and office “parks” to house the real-estate outfits, mortgage boiler rooms and call centers. The dirty secret is that as an economy, Arizona outside of Phoenix and Tucson is “the Third World,” as a prominent booster economist once told me, not for attribution. An overstatement of course, although the Third World also has its gated enclaves of the super-rich and depends heavily on tourism. But among the states, Arizona including Phoenix and Tucson performed dismally on almost any measure of economic well-being except for housing starts and population growth, the latter a mixed indicator that carries huge costs, too. And this was before the Great Recession.
The rest is here.
1:02 PM
PHXations—Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The sixth Ignite PHoenix is tonight down at ASU. The subject is “collaboration” in general, collaboration between ASU and its surrounding community in particular.
Details here. Sign up (and a cumbersome process it is) here.
Things get under way at 6 p.m. It at the ASU Education Lecture Hall, which is on 11th St. just east of Mill, between Gammage and the Tempe Art Museum.
The next Ignite, incidentally, is scheduled for Friday, June 11, at the Phoenix Art Museum.
7:43 AM
MPAC shutting down
The group tried to put the best face on Arizona’s image in an attempt to lure modern businesses to the state. A related post on the group’s messaging here. Here’s the press release:
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: Monday, March 8, 2010, 9 a.m. MST
[…]
MPAC board votes to ‘wind down’ organization in flagging economy
Foundations plan to redirect grant funds to arts and culture organizations
PHOENIX—Confronted with difficult economic times, for itself and the arts and culture organizations it was formed to support, the Metro Phoenix Partnership for Arts and Culture (MPAC) board of directors has voted to cease the nonprofit organization’s staffing and programmatic operations. MPAC will support the plan of its major funders to use remaining grants funds to directly assist arts and culture organizations.
For five years, MPAC has led the state in understanding the vital connection between the creative community and economic development. Formed in 2004 by grants from the Flinn Foundation and Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, MPAC has worked to promote a vibrant creative community in Maricopa County and harness arts and culture as an economic driver. The foundations supported the nonprofit organization with the goal of it achieving self-sufficiency by the conclusion of the grants, scheduled for early 2011.
The recession challenged MPAC’s economic viability and fundraising efforts, as it has done to arts and culture organizations across the nation. It ultimately thwarted plans to place a revenue-generating initiative for arts and culture on the statewide ballot—a strategy that has been successful in other major metropolitan areas during better economic times.
“Rather than continue to consume valuable grant monies, the board made the decision to wind down the organization and support the foundations’ plans to use the remaining grant funds to support arts and culture organizations directly,” said Sandra Werthman, who chairs the MPAC board of directors.
“MPAC has made substantial progress in setting the framework for arts and culture to thrive from an economic perspective in the Phoenix area,” said Myra Millinger, MPAC president and CEO. “We just could not ignore the fiscal realities that jeopardize MPAC’s long-term existence.”
The Flinn Foundation and Piper Trust have agreed to work together in fashioning a one-time arts and culture initiative with the remaining grant funds. Plans will be announced once program details are decided in upcoming weeks.
“Like many businesses in our state, MPAC and its important work has been undermined by the perfect economic storm,” said Judy Mohraz, president and CEO of the Piper Trust. “We have worked with MPAC and have agreed that during these recessionary times, the remaining grant funds should be directed to arts and cultural organizations that are struggling to survive.”
Jack Jewett, Flinn Foundation president and CEO, agreed that redirecting the funds is an act of responsible stewardship and praised the MPAC board for its sacrificial decision. “In better economic times, MPAC would thrive and we believe would expand its mission to help to engineer a more prominent role for arts and culture in the local economy.”
MPAC was launched at the recommendation of the Maricopa Regional Arts and Culture Task Force, a panel of leaders from the corporate, arts, public, educational, and philanthropic sectors that in 2004 issued a blueprint for positioning arts and culture as a vital component of the region’s economic growth.
MPAC has had three primary goals: to position the creative sector as an integral component of the regional economy; to change perceptions of the region’s creative vitality by leveraging its creative assets; and to increase funding for arts and culture.
The final goal proved to be formidable. MPAC spun off an organization to launch a statewide ballot-initiative campaign to increase the state sales tax by one-tenth of a percent, generating up to $100 million annually for arts and culture. While initial polling showed strong voter support for the tax, the most recent polls reflected the recession impact on voters as support slipped significantly. As a result, the group decided to postpone initiative plans until 2012.
MPAC officials are exploring options with other organizations to continue development and execution of existing programs, such as CALA (Celebración Artistica de las Américas), which encourages cultural understanding between people of the Americas through the arts, and Metro Phoenix DNA, a branding initiative to elevate the region’s cultural assets and identity.
About MPAC (www.mpacarts.org): MPAC is a non-profit, regional organization founded in 2004 based on the conviction that a vibrant and sustainable creative sector is fundamental to the region’s ability to compete for talent and industry in a highly competitive global marketplace.
About Flinn (www.flinn.org): The Flinn Foundation is a Phoenix-based, private, nonprofit philanthropic endowment established by Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Flinn in 1965 with the mission of improving the quality of life in Arizona. The nonprofit philanthropy supports the advancement of Arizona’s bioscience sector, the Flinn Scholars Program, and MPAC.
About Piper (www.pipertrust.org ): The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust is a private independent foundation dedicated to honoring Virginia Galvin Piper’s philanthropic commitment to changing lives and strengthening community in Maricopa County. By investing in nonprofits and encouraging strategic planning for the future, Piper Trust strives to make Greater Phoenix a stronger, more nurturing and vibrant community. Piper Trust focuses on healthcare and medical research, children, older adults, arts and culture, education and religious organizations.
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4:29 PM