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| - Cityscape is merely a developers tunnel visioned project (once again) in the heart of downtown Phoenix. Add it to the Arizona Center, Mercado, & Collier Center, that were all touted to be the big missing piece in the downtown Phoenix retail development puzzle. Those projects have floundered and repeatedly tried to re-incarnate themselves. Arizona Center is positively lush compared to this development.
The park* that was razed to make room for this generic piece of downtown real estate (and was supposedly going to be incorporated into the project) has been converted to something called "Patriot's Square", and is nothing more than a cement pad surrounded by oodles of cement slab benches (this is Phoenix people!) that serves merely as an uninviting thoroughfare to get people into the project to spend money, and back out again.
Too often these projects merely take business away from others downtown, because they are the newest, shiniest kid on the block. It's interesting to note that several big law firms (one of which was across the street) have moved to the office part of this complex recently. And why? Because this project was subsidized to the tune of over a 100 Million dollars in tax breaks, and the owners can now offer cheaper rent than their neighbors as a result!
Entering this project from the rear, it's clear that south Phoenix is not even in the equation as you are greeted by a large, looming gray concrete facade that moons any neighbors to the south. As you approach the plaza from the west you are greeted by an unintentionally funny security sign referencing incontinence, rubber diapers, boils and cuts, which precedes your approach to even more concrete with 3 token slabs of grass (a very weak nod to the City park that was there previously). Stores with names like Designer District & West of Soho/The Modern Bohemian, make it clear this project desperately wants to be hip. And yet the look of the place is extraordinarily dull.
It remains to be seen if people will expressly come downtown, pay to park, or want to hang out at a place that has so little charisma - and is studded with many of the same types of businesses that can be found in the neighborhoods where they already reside.
* Any city park that was neglected the way the original Patriot's Square park was, will of course look ugly. After the City stopped watering the trees and plants and let them die, turned off the water fountains, turned off the decorative fountains, locked the bathrooms so no one could use them - of course the park went to hell in a handbasket. No City does those things to a centrally located park without ulterior motives. The bottom line was this was valuable, prime real estate in the middle of downtown Phoenix.
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