Decorative Asphalt Stamping for Intersections and Crosswalks on Main Street

Starting today Monday, June 15 and going until Sunday, July 12, 2015 crews will be working on Main Street from Country Club to Mesa Drive to increase safety and the visual appeal at both street  intersection and crosswalks between the intersections.
Center Street will remain open all the time, with phased closures as the work progresses.
Here in the image to the right is the schedule and work zone plan.
According to an email just now from Rob Antoniak, Community Outreach Director for the Valley Metro Central Mesa Extension, all the crosswalks between Country Club Drive and Mesa Drive get treated in a similar fashion with several of the intersections in between Country Club Drive and Mesa Drive get treated through the intersection as well.

Eastbound traffic will be detoured to 1st Avenue. Westbound traffic will be detoured to 1st Street
Work activities and restrictions may change due to weather or other unforeseen conditions

Maria Polletta: Spotlight on The Human Cost of Escalating Land Values

Residents Speak Up @ City Council Meeting

An updated Preface to this post:
Please watch the video that was included in Maria Polletta's reporting . . . According to Robert's Rules of Order, comments from the public are invited and they are heard for three minutes - however if there is to be further action by the City Council, a motion must be made to place that item on the next meeting's agenda. There was no such action, only that the item "would be looked into".
In the detailed and approved minutes for this session "Mayor Giles apologized to the residents and said that the Council was unable to discuss their concerns because the matter was not agendized."

See this link: http://apps.mesaaz.gov/meetingarchive/ArchiveDocuments/ClerkDetailedMinutes/June%201,%202015%20RGL.pdf

Mobile Home Park Mesa Royale is turning out to be "a not-so royal mess" for the City of Mesa, after ignoring a point in a decade-old 2004 Housing Master Plan.
What's the benefit of all these "Master Plans" when the city only takes action on "a case-by-case basis" and nobody speaks up to raise attention at public meetings directly with city officials?
In that so-called Housing Master Plan, Mesa officials were highlighting the city's larger-than-average amount of manufactured-housing stock — much of it concentrated along the Main Street corridor — and the problems it could create. At the time, the city had 63 mobile-home parks with nearly 14,000 manufactured units.

"The availability of these affordable properties is an asset to lower-income households," planning officials wrote in the city's 2004 Housing Master Plan . . . " 
Now the City of Mesa recommends the best option is clearing the property by bulldozing, after 100+ residents get evicted
Deanna Villanueva-Saucedo, now the Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens board chair, cautions now that it was a warning that somebody needs to be paying attention to this. ... This property has been on the city's radar screen for decades, so for there to be such a delayed, reactive response on everybody's behalf doesn't behoove our community."

The City of Mesa has a double standard - one for investors/developers and a different one for residents who live on land for years paying rent for the only housing  they can afford. The City of Mesa provides direct financial incentives for investor-developers , discounts on utilities, tax relief, providing millions in infrastructure, but in this case . . .  Maria Polletta quotes this:
City Manager Chris Brady said Mesa is indeed trying to help, but it can act only as a facilitator, not as a direct provider of financial aid or other services.
 
Here's a link to the excellent reporting in yesterday's Arizona Republic http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/mesa/2015/06/15/mesa-royale-mobile-home-park-decision-human-cost/71235678/

Here's a link on the same subject written IN SPANISH by Maria Polletta and Laura Gomez on June 5th from La Voz: Translation = Hundred of Families in Mesa Face Imminent Eviction

Cientos de familias en Mesa enfrentan desalojo inminente 

Who's Having Fun in The New Urban Downtown Mesa???

Chalk-on-Blackboard > front of LoFi Coffee

On/Off Main Street anyone taking a walk can find some surprising great stuff that's slightly to the left and off-center and outside the official Chain-of-Command that approves and funds public art installations or wayfinding signage, appearing on blackboards or in empty lots ... like these two.

They may not conform to the official line drawn for public art on the sidewalks with all the bronze statues of a pig, Mormon town founders, a bear, frogs, dinosaurs and Humpty Dumpty located around town, but ya gotta admit they are "charming" and quite "innovative" in the eyes of some people with a sense of humor and delight.

On the stretch of Main Street between Robson and Country Club your blogger could find only one source of information to point the way to find businesses located downtown - see image to the left.

If you take a close look at the base you'll see a colorful extraterrestrial on the base of the drum from which rises an over 12-foot tall support for arrows with names of downtown businesses pointing in the directions to find them.

If you're wondering what purpose that big empty wall in the background has other than marking off the side of a building, it's used as the screen for a series of night-time family-oriented movies that take place in an empty lot in downtown close to a new lightrail station at Country Club Drive called The Sliver Lot.

Valley Metro provides some funding for these outdoor movie showings to make The New Urban Downtown an attractive place for families who want something to do at night. It's part of the Neighborhood Community Series.

Link here:  
Mesa Diversity Office Community Cinema

Noted In Passing: Urban Picnic is Closed

-----------------CLOSED---------------

Everybody loves it when two new businesses open up downtown, but it goes with little notice or fanfare, except for 112 Yelpers on Yelp, that a business on Main Street has closed down.

It' hard to say if Urban Picnic just didn't deliver on its promise to create and give meaning to seriously sophisticated fast food at a reasonable price for the hip modern-day on-the-go person who is health-conscious, or there were issues with management, the quality and prices of the food, or customer service, or maybe its location in  close proximity to a national franchise Subway right across the street and a national franchise Taco Bell within a block.

This Notice of Business Closure, issued by Maricopa County Department of Environmental Services,  has been posted on the door.

Notices like this are usually done as a last resort when then are serious violations of of the health code standards for food establishments that must be corrected within a certain amount of time. Failure to do so results in this action if the violations are not corrected or removed.

From reviews of Urban Picnic posted on various sites, there were numerous negative comments about food quality, sanitation, and infestations of ants, as well as bad reviews for employee attitude/service and high prices.

The block on Main Street between Robson and Country Club Drive, where a new Valley Metro Light Rail Station will be open on August, is way overdue for some attention by all the property owners and planning offices in City Hall.
It's the only block west of Center Street that does not have verandas overhead to create shade on the sidewalks for pedestrians.
There's a mix of retail shops, like Fiber Factory, a gallery named Two Hawks specializing in Native American art, an aesthetics and cosmetology institute adjoining the Yoga Studio on Robson, and a number of churches, an auto repair shop, and a pawn shop as well as other established businesses like Mezona Inn and Il Viniao - quite a mix.

The now-closed Urban Grill on the left side of this building next to The Fiber Factory might be in a good location close by what is probably the highest-density residential housing in all of downtown, an early mid-rise apartment building that's taller than City Hall.
Robson Villas, a condominium complex, is on the other side of it @ 225 West First Street.

Still A Long Way To Go Mesa: Segregation, Civil Rights, Discrimination + Social Justice

Movie Poster from IMDb

Arizona, once part of The Confederacy in its early history was the Cotton capital of the World, and Mesa was a major producer. The cotton workers and their families lived downtown in segregated housing, just a short distance north of Main Street. Black pilots training at Falcon Field were also housed there in for World War II.

The documentary "North Town", made in 2011 by Bruce Nelson who was born and lived here, explores the once segregated black community in Mesa from in the early 1900's to the 1980's. North Town has become known as Washington -Escobedo Park Neighborhood. 

[See below to see City of Mesa Heritage Wall story about this]

It's now the ground area for Phase 2 of Escobedo @ Verde Vista that's rising where some of the original buildings are part of an office and cultural history exhibit.

[Readers can scroll down to an earlier posting on this blog from March 2, 2015 to see details]

Here is a link to a preview trailer for this documentary where Bruce Nelson examines this small community and visits with some of the residents past and present to discover their experiences and connection to the national Civil Rights Movement, local politics, church life, segregation, discrimination, prejudice, bias and racism in Mesa, Arizona and America.  

Written & Directed by Bruce Nelson

Hit this link to see the trailer >>> http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi617719577/

"North Town" was shown @ The Nile Theater back on February 11, 2012 and at the Tempe History Museum on February 26 of this year.
On Wednesday, June 17th the 65-minute documentary returns to downtown Mesa with a screening that will be shown at Mesa Arts Center. Admission is free and open to the public.

6:00 pm

Film screening and panel discussion with Q&A

Dobson Lecture Hall

Go to this link for details from City Of Mesa Office of Diversity http://www.mesaaz.gov/residents/diversity-office/community-cinema-series

Community Cinema is a national documentary screening series sponsored locally by The City of Mesa Office of Diversity, City of Mesa Human Relations Advisory Board, Mesa Public Library, Eight Arizona PBS and the Independent Television Service (ITVS).  

 

Historian Jay Mark wrote a special report on the showing of this documentary that was published in The Arizona Republic on June 11th. As he writes, " It's a subject people still don't want to talk about these days . . . "
You can link to the article here >>> When Mesa faced discrimination and segregation

The City of Mesa has for a long time tried to "white-wash" its questionable history of discrimination that continues to this day. 
It's an issue that certain people still don't want to face by putting consideration of a city-approved nondiscrimination ordinance "on hold", instead of demonstrating the needed leadership that the private sector has long supported. The City Council has been dodging this issue for months.

Here's some information from the City Hall Plaza Heritage Wall: 
Land in the original Mormon townsite could not be purchased by either Mexican-Americans until 1916, and not until 1920 by African-Americans - looks like there weren't any Civil Rights Acts or Fair Housing Laws back then.

1916: Escobedo Neighborhood
In 1916, the Verde Vista subdivision was created, offering Mexican Americans their first real opportunity to buy homes in the Mesa area. Located north of University between Sirrine and Pasadena, Verde Vista grew rapidly in the 1920s. The center of Mesa’s Mexican-American community, it was home to a mixture of residences and small businesses. Later it was called the Escobedo neighborhood, after a local housing project of the same name built in the 1940s.


1920: Washington Community 
African Americans came to Mesa starting in the early 1900s, but discrimination kept them from owning homes in the original townsite. The first housing subdivision to welcome them as buyers and residents was the Mitchell Addition, created in 1920 on land north of University and east of Center. Together with another subdivision, Tuskegee Place, it soon became known as the Washington neighborhood, after the school of the same name.