[This is an expanded version of a section of an earlier post, Signs of Inferiority.]
by Jerome du Bois and Catherine King
Picture this: you're sitting outside a cafe on Grand Avenue, just about any time of the year, on the wide, clean sidewalk, in the shade of a cottonwood tree, finishing your latte. Subtle sounds of water, from fountains and waterwalls, come and go like the people passing by, lapping and burbling, whispering and fading. You smell flowers and fresh bread from nearby shops. The intermittent car traffic rolls by slowly in this special access zone. One or the other of the two streetcars' bells sound every minute or so, a single silvery ring to signal stops and starts, as they ride the center of the Avenue in opposite directions. In a minute you'll rise and stroll up the Avenue on various errands: picking up some wine, cheese, vegetables and meat from the grocer; your wife's Pucci heels, repaired by the cobbler; your dry cleaning. Then you'll hop on the southbound streetcar and ride it down to Van Buren, where you pick up your car from the lot and head on home. Or maybe you grab the downtown shuttle that comes by every few minutes to slide you down to your digs at the Orpheum Lofts. "Honey, I'm home . . ."
We have a vision for this initial stretch of Grand Avenue, from its origin at Seventh Avenue and Van Buren to the intersection at Fifteenth Avenue and Roosevelt. We call it The Spoke. This vision is based on two strategies: redefine the area as a special district, and background the artists, gallerists, and gallerist-landlords. Make them compete with everybody else.
Next time --and there will be one, after the Phoenix Artists Storefront Pilot Program runs out of money-- don't give the money to the artists and gallerists. They have had their chances, one after another, and look what you've still got: fly-by-night galleries (Dem No Dere No Mo') and The Bikini Lounge and the StopNLook Window, and the Paper Heart and the Trunk Space, both of which are halfway to becoming strip joints. The Cone Gallery is a stinker. It's time to stop pretending they care about quality down there, and it's time to stop handling the whole notion piecemeal, and it's time to stop handing over money to self-centered losers.
Take it to the street. Put the money on the Avenue, into the Avenue, instead. No more money for the gallerists and landlords.
Make the street beautiful, and force the gallerists to live up to the street --and fine them in incremental steps to drive them out if they don't go along.
To begin with, create another Special District --here's a name: Special Structural Improvement District --for The Spoke, which would consist of the Grand Avenue Diagonal from 7th Avenue to 15th Ave, and one lot deep on both sides. Those are the boundaries. Why so small? Control, but also because the improvement is restricted to public improvement: the streets, sidewalks, sidestreet curbs, public lighting, shading --but not storefronts or facades or any private property --with one exception: signage.
Another reason is to be able to legally renegotiate all contracts and leases with the city's leaseholders and property owners in that District, so that the landlord-gallerists are put on legal notice of their new obligations.
For the whole project, think permanent beauty. Hire local metal sculptors, neon artists, industrial glass people, lightbox technicians, custom masons, and tile people, even some auto body workers who know metal better than some artists. Some of them are right there on the Avenue, or close by. Think Chris Duran and his crew, and Pete Deise and his, and Corey Paisley, and those they would recommend (as long as they're all legal, of course; that's crucial). We don't endorse these people; they're just examples. They are right there.
They need to make planters and awnings and light-pole extensions and benches and fountains and brickwork and grottoes and waterfalls and tree-protectors and so much else. Two dozen cottonwood trees, twelve on each side. Flowers and greenery everywhere. We want to light the Avenue from end-to-end with neon art, sculptures that cool you off, shading that seduces you, benches that relax you, the sounds and sights of water to soothe you. And public art installations (as in Olafur Eliasson) and permanent sculptures (think the Dublin Spike). For special occasions: Laser beams shooting from one end of the Spoke to the other and bouncing back. Anchored dirigibles with videos projected onto them. Truck-mounted video screens parked here and there. Special shuttle buses with rotating themes. Public-input video cams.
[Imagine sitting in a new, improved Paisley Violin. This one has huge clean windows along the front, with a row of bench-like tables which feature chain-mounted binoculars and small telescopes. Why? Because right across the street is the newly-vitalized, actually eye-catching new installation at the StopNLook Gallery, which has got to be under new management. Diners crowd the tables to scope it out and discuss it.]
Give the core artisans exclusive contracts to make hard, permanent signs for the galleries up and down Grand Avenue, with half the funds provided by the gallerists and half by the city. After a very short while, gallerists who don't comply would stand out like red noses, and there would be legal steps in place to force them away. We need to get rid of the tweakers, pretenders, pole dancers, and runaround artists. (Other retailers will be responsible for their own signage, as long as it meets high standards.)
The abandoned motel on the west side that runs almost up to the Fifteenth Avenue intersection will be completely torn down and turned into The Grand Avenue Flower Gardens, on the same scale and for the same purpose as the Japanese retail flower gardens that used to beautify Baseline Road in South Phoenix. The complex would include a cafe and, running along behind the gardens, about a dozen modestly luxurious lofts.
The centerpiece: a streetcar-pair to run that single diagonal. One named Liberty, the other named Freedom, the pair simply shuttle back and forth between 7th Ave and 15th Ave --no turnarounds, a controlled speed zone, lighted glass blocks embedded in the street at all stops, and, on both sides, embedded in multicolored stone and tile, visual story after visual story of America and Arizona, all along the Spoke, clearly visible for the riders' contemplation as they roll along. The retail-friendliness of a streetcar should be obvious enough not to need emphasis.
And be clear that this is not an Arts District but an Improvement District: that is, it shall not necessarily welcome or encourage artists over restauranteurs, florists, boutique operators, bakers, confectioners, dry cleaners, cobblers; the Spoke could boast cafes and bookstores and stationers and auto detailers and antique stores and niche grocers and strictly-art galleries. And much more. (But not bars and strip clubs. And we would discourage to the point of prohibition corporate venues like Starbucks or California Pizza Kitchen or anything like that. Keep it local.)
Of course this is just a rough plan, with lots of hurdles and holes, but we believe our assumptions and strategies present a better place to begin than the assumptions and strategies operating so far.
And of course, it's all a dream. But we must say it is a capacious and generous and logically unified one, not some politically inched and painfully pinched mosaic of piecemeal projects. What we carry is a vision.
And we imagine that the City Council hearings would bring out every roach who wants to defend the status quo, and that would be an interesting object lesson in itself for all involved. We sure would be taking notes.
Posted by Jerome at July 6, 2005 05:15 PM | TrackBack