Jim Walsh
Arizona Republic
West Mesa’s assortment of boarded-up fast-food restaurants, an abandoned supermarket, run-down motels and unattractive trailer parks didn’t exactly impress a woman from Ohio riding the Metro light rail for the first time during the holidays.
“She really liked Tempe, going over the bridge. She wanted to get back to Mill Avenue” for lunch, said Jim McPherson, a Phoenix historic preservationist, when asked about his mother Bea’s reaction to Mesa’s gateway along the light-rail line.
“They really should start looking at what people see on both sides,” he said. “It’s a no-man’s land. You need a little more there for synergy.”
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Don Mortensen, a co-owner of Light Rail Advisors, a real-estate brokerage, said he has seen a few businesses immediately adjacent to the Sycamore Station prosper, but the economic downtown and the lack of financing delayed plans for a large apartment complex.
Although apartment complexes aimed at Arizona State University students are thriving along light rail in Tempe, “Mesa has been on the end of the development side,” he said.
Just across the Mesa border in Tempe, crews are busy building Apache Trails,a 75-unit federally subsidized apartment complex for deaf seniors that is expected to open this summer, said Larry Schmalz,a Tempe planner.
Despite the recession, light rail has been a major stimulant to construction and business development in Tempe, he said.
“It’s an evolution. It takes a while for it all to come together. It’s one project at a time,” Schmalz said.
But Mortensen and Teresa Brice,a former Mesa mayoral candidate and now executive director of the Local Initiatives Support Corp. in Phoenix, agreed that it’s not fair to blame light rail for the west Mesa corridor’s downward slide either. They noted the area was in decline for at least a decade after the closure of a large Motorolaplant and other factors.
Mortensen said that since Jan. 1, he has been receiving more inquiries about the sites near the Sycamore Station. The 3.5- to 4-acre site is strewn with trash and partially paved. Commuters walk past it on the way to their cars in the park and ride lot.
“I actually do feel very optimistic that something will happen on it,” he said.