I love Metropolitan Phoenix. I understand that some people don’t, but for me it is the perfect paradise on Earth. So do please understand that the withering critique I am about to offer is directed only at the gullibility of some of the people who live here and not at the place itself.
Okayfine. Look at this picture:
This is the confluence of two freeways, de facto some of the most valuable real estate that can be created by fiat of state. Just east of the SR-101 Freeway, the City of Tempe is building a huge shopping mall, which is what you expect to find where two freeways come together. Just east of that, they have built the Tempe Town Lake in the dry riverbed of the Salt River, creating even more very valuable real estate on the banks of the fake lake.
However, an unintended side effect of the giant inflated pontoons that contain the Tempe Town Lake is that any water that happens to flow down the riverbed of the Salt is trapped upstream, creating what I have named the Mesa Town Swamp. To my knowledge, no one but me has ever written about the Mesa Town Swamp, but, as it happens, some of the pilings of the SR-202 Freeway are embedded in the swampy riverbed. I will bet a large dollar that the engineers who planned those pilings did not plan for them to be planted into perpetually saturated soil. (This not to mention the West Nile Virus mosquito-breeding environment of standing water. Nor the more immediate threat that enraged bearded Birkenstockers will declare the Mesa Town Swamp a wetland wildlife refuge, to be preserved unmolested to the very edge of doom.)
But wait. There’s more. In the lower middle of that map, there is a golf course, to which we will return. To the right is a huge city park with it own little fake lake, but just above the golf course are some silver buildings, expressing what the City of Mesa thought was the most important thing to be built at the confluence of two freeways: A water treatment plant. The land is worth at least two million dollars an acre, but everything you’re seeing south of the Freeway is owned by the City of Mesa, much of it set aside for recreation. Even so, with that brand new water treatment plant sitting right there, so far no one has thought to run a hose down to the riverbed and drain the Mesa Town Swamp.
It gets better. Take a moment to read this article from today’s Arizona Republic. The Republic is written by rubes for rubes, so we need to undertake some important translation duties:
First, what is being discussed is not a resort. It’s a waterpark. There is already a waterpark three miles south of this spot in Mesa and another one three miles east in Tempe. You cold say that the waterpark market is saturated — but I never would. Probably, building a waterpark here would put the other two out of business.
Second, no matter how elaborate the proposed waterpark might be, it is not going to persuade any Arizonans to forego that vacation in San Diego for a week in Mesa. Our Winter Visitors are the only people who swim in January, so there might be a tourist buck or two to be had out of this thing, but, even then, The Biltmore and The Phoenician are probably safe.
Third, the developers are very stridently indifferent about building their waterpark in Mesa. Where else might they go instead? Go back and re-read the article if you need to. What other specific sites do they propose? Why none, of course. Why? Because they don’t intend to pay for this land. They expect it as a gift from the City of Mesa? How do we know this? Because there is absolutely no mention of a price to be paid for the land.
And what is that land worth? Two million dollars an acre — at its highest and best use. The waterpark is touted as being a $250 million “investment” — but it will sit on $300 million worth of land.
Sucker bets like this come down the pike all the time. Voters in Mesa were smart enough to reject the Cardinals Football Stadium. The taxpayers of the City of Glendale are footing the bill for that white elephant — which was built by an honest architect to resemble… a white elephant. Unfortunately, Mesans weren’t able to resist a huge taxpayer-subsidized shopping mall being built just west of the land shown above. So even if they can avoid giving away a $300 million piece of land, they’ll still have to wait for an actual capitalist to offer to buy it.
What can they do with the land in the meantime?
How about a golf course and a huge city park…?
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