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April 5th could be a day in Broadway Corridor infamy.  Residents contend Mayor and Council wants to approve the Broadway Corridor 30% design plan apparently against their will.  City transportation and the RTA seem to be in neighborhood quicksand.  The upcoming vote is a key milestone for final acquisitions of historic business and residential properties slated for full or partial removal.  Local residents and neighborhood leaders see the widening as a damaging vanilla colored 6-lane widening between Eulid and Country Club.  The Broadway Coalition, a citizens group representing surrounding neighborhoods asks that you attend the crossroads event on April 5th, 5:30PM, @ Mayor & Council chambers, 255 W. Alameda.  A public plan display preceding the vote is a week earlier on March 29th, 5:30PM, 450 S. Tucson Boulevard.  More here:  Broadway Improvements

A meeting of 25 neighborhood leaders was hosted by the resident based Broadway Coalition at the Ward 6 office on March 21st.  The meeting was intended to mobilize city wide support to turn down the 30% plan, ahead of M&C’s vote.  The coalition says the Broadway needs to be done right or not at all; that the improvement wastes 76 million dollars of tax money.  It damages local businesses and historic context along the Sunshine Mile.  Please view the Broadway Coalition Website  (more…)

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STREETSBLOG USA raps up the results of more than 2 years of debate over the stretch along Broadway from Euclid to Country Club in a poignant editorial called Pima County Holds Better Sidewalks Hostage to Get a Road Expansion.  Many should agree with the gist of this conclusion.  Broadway’s 2nd to last bottleneck settles for 6 lanes at a political and cultural cost.  The last bottleneck is the snarly entrance into downtown. Yes, we are stuck with that. Sunshine Mile RIP.  Like many important cultural attributes of Tucson heritage, what perpetuates cultural losses to new development is a lack of community design engagement.  Many things could have happened on the Sunshine Mile, but the resolve to engage was not a factor in the outcome.   Not even a 2 1/2 year task force protocol can overcome having its creative juices drained by  abasing civic duty and hidden agendas.  Read the article for a quick summary of what we have moving forward with somewhat of a blank slate.

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After nearly two decades in economic limbo, the Sunshine Mile should be a lighthouse for new transportation alternatives but as the CFT session get closer to a design conclusion,  it is not clear the final design will be any more than just another 6 lane road project.  The Citizen’s Task Force (CTF) dearly wants to tear open the minds of  RTA leadership, however, as reality set in, it becomes evident that funding has many strings attached to results.  See Chuck Huckelberry’s memorandum of 5/8/14:  Memo.   The ward 6 newsletter tracks this process, now 18 months long.  You can see it in  Excerpts.   You should also view the Broadway Coalition Report  Citizens and surrounding neighborhood leaders has been a large influence in pushing for  balance.   Midtown resident,  JD Garcia offers a guest editorial; Broadway is not a Corridor to Somewhere Else., that is a valuable summary of the corridors history and what would be good for it.

Next citizens task force meeting –  July 17th, 5:30PM,  at the Child & Family Resources, 2800 E. Broadway   For updates on meetings, view the Broadway Boulevard Project Web Page at http://www.tucsonaz.gov/broadway

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Quotes from Bob Cook…”From the beginning, the Broadway Coalition and city-appointed Citizens Task Force have questioned the wisdom of rigidly following the 2006 ballot language specifying a 150-foot-wide, eight-lane roadway…The 2006 RTA Plan was based on inflated projections of traffic volumes that have changed very little in the past two decades…The research supporting the 100-foot width is robust. Rapid suburban population growth is no longer the key to future prosperity because of higher resource costs and climate impacts as well as the preference for urban living by the “millennial” generation…”  please view Bob’s full article in Robert Cook: 8-Lane Roadway no Longer Makes Sense. (more…)

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The Broadway Corridor plan is undergoing evaluation by the Broadway Task Force in an effort adjust the scope to something that fits Broadway.  It is a long-delayed plan with many completed commercial building acquisitions.  These structures are tagged for demolition and damage business incentive along a key stretch of Broadway.   It is a long standing problem.   View the full article  in Demolition Dilemma,Tucson Weekly by Tim Vanderpool.

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