Cast In Bronze | What's Zebulon Pearce's Take on The New Urban DTMesa Now?

Readers be warned: this is an exercise in imagination inspired by one of the numerous bronze statues placed on the streets here in downtown Mesa in a public art program all over town by none other than Wayne Pomeroy, who led some of the waves of development changing our street-level urban landscape - some like this one in the accompanying image a human-scale reminder of our vanishing shared past: Zebulon Pearce standing in front of his building on the south side of Main Street. We have Wayne Pomeroy to thank for art.

Take a look where Zeb Pearce stands now in front of The Zeb Pearce Companies Building @c155 West Main Street.
It's an historic property, up-for-sale now, vacant for more than a few years, but read the plaque in the image to the right to know its history and the business story of one of the city's "pioneers" - the site was once the OK Stable opened in 1901 [before cars came to town] and flash forward about 30 years to 1932 thanks to an ammonia cooler Zeb became the first distributor for Colorado's Coors beer. . . and that's one of the points in this exercise of imagination about regenerating downtown.
Main Street has certainly changed.
For one thing there's no longer two rows of cars parking in the middle of the street - public transit Valley Metro Light Rail connects Mesa round-trip along the line to Tempe and Phoenix. The sidewalks are wider for pedestrian walkways. There are trees and lamp posts, and green plantings and benches - and we have some new color and new art installations - that turquoise blue mini-mural in the right foreground says "Welcome to Mesa". See people? No

After just more than two years living downtown, passing by this bronze sculpture at least 15 times a week, your MesaZona blogger had a revelation calling me to take a good long look, to get a good read-out of what was written in bronze, and to change perspective to see what Zeb would be looking at today [image to the left] right across on the north side of Main Street.
Except for one vacant storefront in the entire block, every retail storefront is filled, open-for-business by small business owners.
This economic development driving the regeneration and re-activation of the New Urban Downtown Mesa is small-scale and incremental, adapting and re-using existing unique buildings - not the massive mega-million proposals coming out of City Hall that would radically transform our shared urban landscape.
Since this exercise in imagination started with Zeb and beer,  readers can see Desert Eagle Brewery right across the street.
It's not a corporate brand name and they don't have distributors [yet] - it's locally owned and operated. The owner Joe Campbell is dedicated to craft beer excellence ... maybe that standard for excellence will give the brilliant planners inside City Hall some idea of what downtown is all about.
I'll be happy to raise a glass to that - and to all the small business owners who are here and to those who might be - and are encouraged - locating here.
Blogger's Note: the block of Main Street to the west between Country Club/Main has attracted five new businesses, including a smaller-scale nanobrewery named Oro planning a soft opening this weekend on Saturday.
The Old Brick House Vintage Marketplace [re-located from back of The Drew Building]
Worth Take-Away Sandwich Shop
ASIS Massage Education
Cloud Smoke Shop







Does Public Art Have A Story To Tell?