Summit to help form plan for urban Mesa

Back in 2001, when the Fannie Mae Foundation described Mesa as the biggest “boomburb” in the country, the blessing was mixed.

The “boom” part was nice, speaking to decades of growth that had rocketed what was a tiny farming town into the ranks of America’s largest cities.

But the “burb” part stung a little, speaking to Mesa’s perpetual identity crisis as it toiled blandly in Phoenix’s shadow.

Now, like a large but awkward adolescent, Mesa is trying to acquire the graces befitting its physical size.

Another step in that direction is scheduled for Dec. 9, when local officials, developers, financiers and nationally

recognized urban-planning experts will gather at the Mesa Arts Center. Their aim: Develop strategies and create opportunities for turning west Mesa into a model of 21st-century urban redevelopment.

The urban-development summit is under the auspices of the Neighborhood Economic Development Corp., a downtown Mesa non-profit that assists small businesses across the state. It recently has been active in helping Mesa businesses cope with light-rail construction through downtown.

It will be the second such summit of Mayor Scott Smith’s tenure.

The first, in March 2012, brought 50 developers together for breakfast, video presentations, a bus tour of the square-mile downtown core, and a Cactus League game.

As part of that pitch, city officials touted the more than 40 prime acres the city owned in the downtown area — land Smith has always said Mesa is willing to let go on the cheap if the right development deal comes along.

Some of that land now has been spoken for. One piece went to a housing company that is completing an 81-unit senior complex near the Mesa Arts Center — the first million-dollar-plus private construction project in Mesa’s downtown since the mid-1980s.

Just west of there, another chunk of city land is set aside for the $30 million Barry and Peggy Goldwater Library and Archives, which chose the Mesa site in October 2012.

Since then, Mesa also has spent more than $10 million retrofitting two downtown buildings as starter campuses for three of the five private colleges and universities the city has recruited over the past two years.

Those accomplishments, Smith said, will allow Mesa to tell an entirely different story at this year’s summit.

“The last one was very successful,” he said. “This one, we’re much farther along. Light rail is under construction. We have the colleges. ... Last time, we were completely talking about what could be. Now, we can certainly talk about what is happening.”

Another major difference in this year’s meeting is that Mesa has expanded the focus to include the Fiesta District.

The largely commercial area that stretches 2 miles along Southern Avenue east of the Tempe border used to be one of the Valley’s premier shopping and entertainment districts. Competition from other cities killed several of