Reality-Check For A Spoon-Fed Reporter: The Tallest Building In Downtown Mesa

Hey!
Pardon me, dear readers, but more often than not, this is the sensation your MesaZona blogger feels when he sees and reads published stories in mainstream media that are so far off-the-mark on the simple and straightforward basics of accurate journalism.
Case in Point: an article from back in July of last year that's a total Ra-Ra for a way-out-of-scale way-out-of-proportion way "above-the-market" for "up-scale urban" housing and questionable real estate speculation here in the New Urban Downtown.
Talking about what? Another over-sized "Pie-In-The-Sky" dream to plop down atop a less-than-one-acre parking lot a luxury 15-story hotel tower in a 2-story historic district and 75 above-market apartments adjacent to a charter school with 700 students to benefit the business interests of Mega-Millionaire State Senator Bob Worsley,  a close crony in the cohorts of the mayor.

Gotta wonder when someone whose job it is to report "the news" can take the words, directly quoted without fact-checking from Director of Downtown Transformer Jeff McVay (shown in an image to the right) and to reproduce them without even looking around at the streetscape, or for that matter admitting that she got the cross-streets incorrect where Worsley's monster oversized Pie-In-The-Sky Dreams" could come true if this kind of hood-winking gets promoted more - without questioning - in corporate mainstream media.
Most of the reporters who are newbies, recent graduates of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism @ ASU have any easy way to get stuff published when so much of they write is "spoon-fed" news that the City of Mesa - or the Mayor's Cohorts - tell them what to write . . Uncle Walter is probably rolling around in his grave if he knew what kind of journalism these corporate slackers are practicing

With such glaring obvious mistakes any reasonable person might and could doubt what passes as news.

Just one small piece of information provided by McVay that Worsley's real estate speculation, registered as MACDev LLC with the Arizona Corporate Commission just a week before a Memorandum of Understanding was agreed to by the City of Mesa, is the tallest building here in downtown Mesa: it's simply NOT true.
The tallest building here is Courtyard Towers, towering like a behemoth of 15-stories high over the 1-story and 2-story buildings in the neighborhood on N Robson Street just north of Main Street - an assisted-living facility

Yes it's that "Vision Thing" all over again presented with pretty pictures computer-generated by some scatter-brained architects in distorted perspectives and mis-positioning reverse-mirror images of imaginary and un-imaginative buildings that don't know East from West. . .to be accurate this view shows the distorted narrow back-alley behind the Drew Building seen at right.
The location of the tall imaginary building shown at center is the SEC of Main/MacDonald where the Bank of America has been located for years!
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Readers will note that reporter Jessica Boehm starts off with what got done in Phoenix - that's not, however, what makes Mesa UNIQUE or respects the historic district where Worsley wants to plop-down his Pie-In-The-Sky fantasies
Looks like a 6-7 story CAD-generated image - when the proposal is for 15 stories
Click here for more of the Spoon-fed new report

 

"Habitat Metro — known for Portland Place Condominiums, Portland on the Park and the recently openedFOUND:RE boutique hotel— wants to bring a 14- or 15-story hotel and apartment complex across the street from the Mesa Arts Center . . ."

(Photo: Allen + Philip Parters)

Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this story listed the wrong cross streets for the proposed project's location.

"One of the pioneers who helped reinvigorate downtown Phoenix nearly a decade ago with a risky condo project wants to take another risk — this time in downtown Mesa. . . "