A ten-member ad hoc committee has now been formed in Phoenix to explore the possibility of building a Latino Cultural Center designed to serve and celebrate the legacy of the city’s growing Hispanic population. According to city documents, a new structure could cost up anywhere from $3.6 million to $4.5 million to build, while the renovation of an existing space would come in at around $1.8 million. The city must also decide exactly where the center will be located. Current renovation possibilities under consideration include a vacant structure in the popular Roosevelt Row arts district. Two other structures, both owned by the city, are also being reviewed. As proposed in previous public meetings, the center would be used for cultural events, lectures, art classes, and festivals serving a demographic that currently comprises roughly 40 percent of Phoenix’s population. Funding for the project, however, is uncertain, although nearly $1 million still available from a 2001 bond approved by voters may be tapped for the center. City officials have also suggested that additional funding could come from individual donors, and both foundation and corporate giving. The ad hoc committee is made up of local Latino leaders and artists, as well as three members of the local business community, and two members of the Phoenix City Council. By Garry Boulard
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A long-planned effort to build a new College of Fine Arts building on the main campus of the University of New Mexico, while upgrading other structures used by the college, could cost up to $45 million. In a document called FY20 Capital Plan Priorities, UNM notes that it would cost around $35 million to build a new main College of Fine Arts building, and another $10 million to upgrade the more than a dozen other structures used by the school Noting that those structures were built between 1927 and 1977, the document says: “The buildings have leaky roofs and outdated infrastructure, including power and data.” “These factors,” the document continues, “combined with inadequate size and types of facilities, create ineffective teaching spaces as needed to support the various CFA programs.” Because of the size and scope of the College of Fine Arts replacement and renewal effort, it is expected that UNM will seek funding in phases from the New Mexico State Legislature for the project. By Garry Boulard millennials, looking for work, expect a better economic life than their parents, says new study5/21/2019 Although large segments of the Millennial Generation born between 1980 and 2000 have yet to find what might be described as career jobs, they nonetheless have faith in their own economic future. So much so, says a survey compiled by the University of Chicago, that they fully expect to at some time in the future outpace their Baby Boomer parents. Officially called GenForward, the survey indicates that members of the Millennial Generation who are either African American, Asian American, or Hispanic American indicated by margins ranging between 63 percent and 76 percent that they expected to do better economically than their parents. That finding was lower among responding white Millennials, 56 percent of whom said they expect to have a better economic future than their mothers and fathers. In an interview with the news site Marketplace, Cathy Cohen, GenForward founder, said that even though Millennials overall expressed confidence in their economic future, they also “want some real protection.’ That real protection means that they are for what Cohen described as an “active state” that would see wealthier Americans paying higher taxes for programs to retrain workers displaced by technology. While the Millennials have less wealth and own less property than recent preceding generations, the survey also indicated that large majorities of them are willing to be a part of an American tradition that was probably embraced by their elders: a willingness to move for a good job. According to the survey, an average of 75 percent across all of the Millennial racial and ethnic groupings said they would relocate for the right job opportunity. Not unlike surveys of Generation X, those born generally between 1964 and 1980, the Millennials could be classified as Social Security skeptics. A synopsis of the survey said that “Majorities of Millennials across race and ethnicity do report feeling not at all or not very confident in the future of Social Security.” Those expressing skepticism ran from 55 percent of African-American respondents to 68 percent of the white respondents. The GenForward survey tracks the opinions and views of more than 1,700 respondents and is conducted every two months. By Garry Boulard Work could begin sometime next year on a unique new project that will combine residential, retail, office, and green space in the oldest part of downtown Gilbert, Arizona. If all goes as planned, what is currently a site used for parking on the southwest corner of Gilbert Road and Juniper Avenue will see the building of up to 250 residential units, 100,000 square feet of Class A office space, and even a boutique hotel with 150 rooms. The project upon completion will be designed to compliment what has become a thriving collection of new restaurant, retail, and office space in Gilbert’s Heritage District. Members of the Gilbert Town Council have voted to enter into an agreement allowing a group called Heritage North Partners LLC to purchase the town-owned, nine-acre site for $5.3 million. Public meetings designed to solicit input on the project are expected to be held in the coming months, with the official plans for the mixed-use scheduled to be submitted to the Town of Gilbert in March of next year. As proposed, the project will also see the construction of two separate, five-story parking facilities, and an interior courtyard with an emphasis on green space. Designed by the Phoenix-based LGE Design Build, the project, if all goes well, is expected to be completed sometime in late 2021. Responding to growth that has seen Gilbert’s population jump from just over 100,000 in the year 2000 to more than 242,000 today, town officials have in recent years embraced a comprehensive and so-far successful plan to see bring more businesses into the Heritage District. Notes the Phoenix Republic: “Nearly all of the temporary parking lots in the district are town-owned land parcels that will someday be developed.” By Garry Boulard Tucson officials would like to transform a portion of a busy downtown corridor into a walkable and public meeting space. What has been historically known as the Sunshine Mile on Broadway Boulevard has long been treasured for its one and two-story Modernist buildings built primarily in the late 1940s and 1950s. But now as Tucson gets closer to beginning a widening project on Broadway, more thought has been given to the idea of adding outdoor seating, new lighting, and perhaps even a pocket park along the Sunshine Mile. A report issued last year by Tucson’s Rio Nuevo District called A Placemaking Vision Plan for the Broadway Corridor said the goal of reconfiguring the block is to “take it into the future as a walkable, unique destination—a place that people will want to go to, not through.” The city is planning several public meetings to gather input and ideas for what the community space component of the Sunshine Mile should look like. Work on the community space project would probably not begin until 2021, after the road widening work has been completed. By Garry Boulard renowned architect i.e. pei dies; worldwide legacy includes work in boulder, el paso, and denver5/20/2019 The American Institute of Architects has issued a statement following the death of legendary architect I.M Pei. Robert Ivy, chief executive officer of the group, said that Pei “created lanterns that shone a light with the power of architecture.” “His body of work, at once rational and artful, inspired generations, including his fellow architects, who were touched and encouraged by the power of his design and a life lived with dignity and purpose.” Besides his work globally, Pei also left his mark in the West, most notably in 1956 when he designed the Mile High Center, a 23-floor structure that was one of Pei’s first high-rise projects, and the 16th Street Mall in the early 1980s, both in downtown Denver. His other Denver work includes the now-demolished downtown Zeckendorf Plaza. Pei also, in the mid-1960s, designed the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. For El Paso, Pei designed the air traffic control tower at the El Paso International Airport. That 1968 project resulted in the first such control tower in the U.S. to be more than 130 feet in height. Born in Guangzhou, China in 1917, Pei moved to the U.S. in 1935 and attended both the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard before establishing his own firm, I.M. Pei & Associates in 1955. His work in Denver, beginning in the early 1950s, also led to Pei redesigning the city’s Courthouse Square. Pei’s Modernist style has been described by the New York Times as “clean, reserved, sharp-edged and unapologetic in its use of simple geometrics and its aspirations to monumentality.” His other notable projects include a 70 foot-tall glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris; the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston; and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. By Garry Boulard Specific development plans for the former site of the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso may soon become more clear as the purchase of that land nears completion later this summer. Nearly three years ago, members of the University of Texas at El Paso’s Regents Board put together a proposal offering to purchase the 458-acre site for $17 million. The site’s ASARCO plant had been operational for nearly a century and was familiar to everyone in the city due to the 829 foot-tall copper smokestack, along with two smaller smokestacks, that were part of the facility. That plant closed up its operations in 1999, with the vast majority of structures at the site demolished in the spring of 2013. For years leading up to the UTEP purchase offer, school officials talked about redeveloping the ASARCO site for a mixed-use project, with even some part of the property set aside for athletic events. Nearly two years ago, UTEP even announced plans to offer some 200 acres of the site to online retail giant Amazon, which was then talking of building a second headquarters beyond its Seattle base. At the time of that announcement, UTEP President Diana Natalicio described the land in question as “real property in a prime location.” The school’s ongoing relationship with the ASARCO site has additionally included the preserving of thousands of records, drawings, and photos that are now a part of the UTEP Library’s Special Collections Department. By Garry Boulard Plans are underway for the construction of a new transfer station belonging to the Public Service Company of New Mexico. The project will go up on the southwest corner of Paseo Del Norte NE and west of Eubank Boulevard NE on currently vacant land, some 13 miles to the northeast of downtown Albuquerque. What is being called the La Cueva Substation and Transmission Line Project is part of an ongoing PNM effort to respond to increased demand in areas of continued population growth. The company currently has nearly 3,200 miles of transmission lines moving power from a variety of substations into areas where the power is needed. The La Cueva project would include a 115 kV transmission line that will be roughly one mile in length. The proposed project has sparked the opposition of nearby residents, including a neighborhood group called the North Albuquerque Acres Community Association, which has raised concerns about its impact on property values, among other issues. PNM has earlier indicated that it would like to see work on the project begin later this year, with a 2020 completion date. But the project must first win the approval of the Bernalillo County Commission. By Garry Boulard The era of building new infrastructure in this country may be receding, replaced by an era of simply repairing existing infrastructure that was built decades ago. So suggests a new report just issued by the Washington-based Brookings Institute contending that policymakers should place a greater emphasis on finding funding for the upgrading and maintenance of the nation’s roads and bridges. The report, Shifting Into an Era of Repair, says overall spending on infrastructure work in the U.S. has decreased in the last decade from nearly $465 billion to just over $440 billion. The same trend is seen in infrastructure spending as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, with an average 2.5 percent over the last few decades decreasing in 2017 to 2.3 percent. This decline in infrastructure spending, continues the Brookings study, “masks a more significant trend unfolding across the country: increased spending on infrastructure operation and maintenance.” Seen from the perspective of the 1950s, the decade that saw a blooming of new highway construction across the country, spending on new infrastructure projects has decreased from around 60 percent of overall national investments in 1956 to 40 percent in 2017. At the same time, continues the report, states and localities have decreased their capital spending by just over $31 billion, while upping their operation and maintenance spending by just under $24 billion. The report adds that the country has entered an age in which basic infrastructure maintenance needs will continue to grow, and that both federal and state policymakers should focus on that aspect of infrastructure work when it comes to funding. “There is a need to not only better articulate the role in infrastructure investment, but to also rethink how state and local leaders can partner more efficiently with one another and be more intentional in their future investments,” the report concludes. By Garry Boulard The largest airport in North America, comprising in excess of 52 square miles, will soon see the construction of an extensive airline maintenance hangar. The 130,000 square foot facility at the Denver International Airport will belong to Southwest Airlines, one of the nearly two dozen airlines flying in and out of the airport daily. Announcement of the project by Southwest Airline chief executive officer Gary Kelly represents a poignant victory for the airport: more than three decades ago the airline quit its operations in Denver due to cost issues. Not until 2006 did the Dallas-based airline resume flights in and out of the Mile High City, now logging 224 daily operations out of Denver. In hailing Southwest’s announcement, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock called the airline a “vital partner for the Denver International Airport.” As planned, the new hangar will be large enough to house at any given time three twinjets. There will also be room just outside the new hangar for up to eight more jets. Altogether, the project is expected to cost at least $150 million to build, with work beginning later this summer. Denver International Airport is currently the home to nearly two dozen airlines, including Frontier Airlines and United Airlines. Frontier, Southwest, and United represent roughly 85 percent of the Denver airport’s operations. I |
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