I love Tempe Town Lake!
I'm an Arizona native and spent my childhood riding bikes with my family up and down the Indian Bend Wash park (great trails) and through the Papago Park area. The empty river was always so ugly. As a teenager (in the '80's) I learned that the ASU school of Architecture came up with the Rio Salado concept back in the 1960's to have the river flowing again throughout the entire valley. Would have been great to see that happen, but at least Tempe voters could see the value of this and approve it!
I have a small sailboat and going to Tempe Town Lake is a short 10 minute drive for me. Good launch ramp, very nice docks at a good height for small boats. My only wish would be for the lake to be bigger; but at least there aren't any power boats on it! I'm not a windsurfer, but it seems like it would be nice if they allowed windsurfers on the lake. It would probably be overrun by them though. Maybe they could be limited to a portion of the lake.
I think that Tempe Town Lake is one of the crown jewels of the Phoenix area.