V2V Vacancies-to-Vitality Here In The New Urban DTMesa?

It's been going on more than 18 months since Valley Metro Light Rail public transit service arrived here after 3 years of construction on Main Street with Mesa Mayor John Giles saying that it will be the salvation train driving economic development and re-vitalizing downtown where his NextMesa starts. Did it ever to this day get off-the-ground?
Did it ever get going to the next level  ??
Did it go in the direction John Giles wanted?
True he's been elected Mayor in a no-contest  - in a long line of mayors in Mesa - and anointed leader of the political machine here, at the same he's a practicing personal-injury/accident law attorney, commonly referred to as 'ambulance chasers' . . . can he in any way lead from behind?

When so-called 'latter-day saints' of any plausible holier-than-thou persuasion make a big political blunder staging a photo opp with the Devil [like in last year's over-the-top State-of-the-City 2016 speech] to an assembled throng of the faithful, you can bet your bottom-dollar Giles was gaming everybody getting setting the stage for a bogus public relations trick to hoodwink Mesa taxpayers that back-fired blowing-up big time when the devil-in-the-details plan became a major screw-up where an under-handed $500,00 privately-financed campaign was registered @ the same address at his own private law practice on 2nd Street. 

John Giles murky vision to radically transform downtown into an ASU satellite campus was rejected by voters - it just didn't fly, getting shot-down by an informed public.

With everyone [that's almost half-a-million men, women and children] already in-hock to the tune of about $3,150 each/per capita thanks to conservative Republican regimes inside and and outside of City Hall pushing and getting sales tax hikes to guarantee borrowing money on municipal bonds. Conservative Repubs don't favor raising taxes, but 'special-interest groups' do like the mayor and his real estate-rich friends, aka THE FOG.

 

Or is he always running and playing catch-up chasing a thing out-of-his reach?

Will the figments [or faith-based fantasies of that old-time 19th-Century pioneer mentality ] of his imagination ever catch-up with reality on-the-ground?

Who's getting on-board? Thought leaders that's who with John Giles getting left behind when he admits he has short comings and failed to engage the community

Facilitating conversations with thought leaders

OUR FUTURE IS ON THE LINE

Building Community Through Transportation

Transformative organizations like LISC Phoenix look for ways to explain their impact on the community.

JDD Specialities helped facilitate publication of an article about transit-oriented development in Green Living Magazine. This entry was posted in Arizona, Phoenix, Portfolio, Urban revitalization and tagged arizona, light rail, LISC, transit, transit-oriented development on February 22, 2016 by Jennifer Dokes.

Read the whole article click on or touch this link

Properties for sale or lease are all over the place
See website for downtown Mesa put out by
Downtown Mesa 


New Article 13 March by same writer

Resistance? How about persistence infused with insistence?

Source: JDD Specialties 

Here's the opening:

     "It’s a good day when references to Sisyphus, Machiavelli and John Adams pop up in perfect moments during a short interview. What a departure from the unavoidable social media poison accepted as civic engagement and productive discourse.

Thoughtfulness and community spirit can sprout and grow in the harshest political and social landscapes. Phoenix, in many respects, is such a place. But here’s a riff that warms my heart . . ."

Here's one take-away:

Establishing an American society where human values are self-evident is a work in progress. It always has been. The best work on universal goals always has been at the local level — by city block, neighborhood and zip code and by school, city council and legislative districts. An insistence on doing the right thing changes the world around you.