The FOG MindSet In Mesa vs Small +Incremental In Surprise

Maybe due to the recent downpours of rain and the limited visibility created by fog-in-the-air, your MesaZona blogger has been hunkering down at home starving a fever to clear up some thinking about regeneration here in The New Urban Downtown Mesa.
While some individuals in the entrenched political machine have called me directly to my face a 'Rabble-Rouser' and others in snarky second-hand comments a 'Trouble-Maker', those insinuations regarding my motivations publishing this blog site - now approaching 100,000 page views -  fall way off-the-mark, merely exposing the closed mindset in politics here within a certain circle of friends and families who have dominated this city for generations with overlapping and undisclosed business interests.

A recent case in point [and there are others] was the bogus privately-financed $500,000+   public relations fiasco to hoodwink Mesa voters to approve a $220M tax increase for a Pie-In-The-Sky half-baked proposal that would have benefited this group of conservative Repubs and their "special interests" - voters rejected this major screw-up, a major turn in the wrong direction for Mayor John Giles' NextMesa campaign that he calls a setback.
Getting better informed and taking action, Mesa taxpayers rejected whatever thinking or scheming went into that narrow-minded tunnel vision group-think: the public voted overwhelmingly NO!  

Regarding higher education initiatives, it needs to get pointed out that while five out-of-state universities were lured downtown four years ago by ex-mayor Scott Smith's H.E.A.T. initiative mostly to fill vacant city-owned buildings - with three moving out - two have struggled to enroll a threshold of over 400 students with Benedictine University starting with 70 students in 2012 reaching that goal in 2017 at their downtown campus and realizing the need for nearby student housing downtown in the adaptive re-use for an historic property activated by public-private partnerships for finance.
That strategy worked in a 5-month timetable for investing about $4million dollars for property acquisition and construction without major demolition downtown or business disruptions. Everyone worked together. 
It was not the radical transformation for downtown envisioned by the mayor and the FOG and promoted by Director of Downtown Transformation Jeff McVay - it is the kind of small and incremental growth that keeps what makes Mesa unique.

Just a couple of days ago, the City of Surprise announced its plan to build a residential campus downtown for another out-of-state university, capitalizing on that city's investment in existing infrastructure using the development strategy for small and incremental growth for higher education, starting this Fall with 250 students growing to 3,000 ten years later in close proximity to a recreation complex.
Industry News Education           

Ottawa University revives plan to build $20M residential campus in Surprise

17 Feb 2017 

Source: Phx Biz Journal

Ottawa University is opening a 35-acre residential campus in Surprise this fall, complete with student housing and 19 varsity men's and women's sports teams.

Kevin Eichner, president of Ottawa University, said he has been exploring the idea of a residential campus since 2010.

"In 2011, we came very close to doing a deal, and then we had to move onto a couple of other cities, and now we're back here with Surprise," he said, working with Surprise leadership for nearly two years.

Surprise Mayor Sharon Wolcott said the city's investment is mainly in providing an existing infrastructure.

"We came up with a plan on how we should share our resources, share our amenities, share our recreational campus," she said.

The new school will be next to the Surprise City Hall and the Surprise Recreational Complex, which will be used by the university's athletics department that will work toward a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics designation.

Ottawa University has had a presence in the Phoenix area for 40 years, providing education for working adults.

Wolcott said the residential campus will spur economic development downtown.

"We already have a substantial amount of the Valley's workforce living here in the West Valley," she said. "This is one of few options for a private university to offer an education to students in the West Valley — anywhere in the Valley."

Plans call for opening the university this fall with 250 students, growing to 3,000 residential students over 10 years

Expansion plans for the Surprise campus include residential housing, an indoor activity center, dining and conference space and new athletic fields, including a stadium with artificial turf for football and soccer.

Ottawa University has not yet selected an architect or general contractor for the project.

About Ottawa University

Ottawa University is a private, nonprofit, Christian university that was founded in Ottawa, Kansas, in 1865, and operating in Arizona since 1977 with campuses in Phoenix and Queen Creek. It also has been serving the Surprise community for eight years at its current location as part of the Communiversity of Surprise, a partnership of higher education institutions.

  Angela Gonzales covers health, biotech and education for the Phoenix Business Journal