City is set to ask for bids on key Downtown plots

Two more developers will get a chance to do exactly that in 2007, as the city is set to ask for informal bids to transform two key Downtown plots into new waves of homes, shops and maybe a health center.

The sites, both expected to be 15 acres or more, are in prominent locations near Interstate 10 — one just south of Congress Street on the Santa Cruz River and the other stretching along the I-10 frontage road adjacent to Barrio Viejo, from 22nd Street north almost to Cushing Street.

The 15 acres along the Santa Cruz will come first, said City Manager Mike Hein, likely being released in February. A request for bidders on the second property will probably come sometime midyear.

The development on the West Side will come first because the city is further along in talks with the neighbors about what they want to see developed there. Hein said there will be another meeting next Thursday with the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association.

"If we involve the stakeholders up front we're a lot better off," Hein said.

As for the Barrio Viejo request, "we're much further away on that side," Hein said. The city still needs to engage the residents and community leaders there, he said.

Manufacturer and developer Don Martin, who has often been critical of the city and its involvement Downtown, said of the call for bids, "This is a good step in the right direction."

He said the city needs three things: transparency, accountability and to be inclusive. "This process gives us all of those things," Martin said.

Rio Nuevo Director Greg Shelko said both projects are high priorities, and they are likely to be the last bid requests to go out until the issue of a Downtown arena is resolved.

The private sector has expressed interest in several properties Downtown, Shelko said. "We should put the property out there and have the market respond."

15 acres on West Side

The 15 acres on the West Side are bounded by the Santa Cruz River, Congress Street and two planned new roads — the north-south Avenida del Convento and the east-west extension of Cushing Street.

The property is just north of the planned Tucson Origins Heritage Park and several museums proposed for the West Side. It is directly east of the Mercado at Menlo Park, a mixed-use project now being built by Rio Development Co.

Development of the 15 acres will, for the most part, complete the development plans for the west side of Rio Nuevo. Menlo Park Neighborhood Association President Mac Hudson said that's a reason to get the project done right.

Hudson said the neighborhood would like to see a mixed-use development with affordable housing built there. "We'd like to see it anchored with a public market that looks, smells and feels Tucson."

Hudson would also like to see the planned modern streetcar line extended north from where it's supposed to end, just across the Santa Cruz River on the West Side, so it stops near the 15-acre site.

Hein said he believes Rio Development could submit a bid, since Rio is developing the adjacent Mercado at Menlo Park. Rio Development's owner, Gerald Dixon, did not return calls.

Another project that has been talked about is a proposal by world-renowned physician Dr. Andrew Weil to build an integrative-medicine center on the site to promote health tourism in Tucson.

Cushing to 22nd Street

The more than 15 acres on the East Side of I-10, adjacent to Barrio Viejo, is a linear yet jagged piece of land. The request for informal bids to develop it will go out midyear, Hein said, giving the city time to meet with residents and resolve some issues about the property.

The first issue is a long-term lease the city granted to a trust owned by the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., on the former El Campo Tire site off 22nd Street. Giffords' recent opponent, Randy Graf, made the lease and alleged environmental problems on the site an issue in the past congressional campaign.

John Wesley Miller, one of the developers who will submit proposals for the site, said the Giffords property complicates the deal, because he'd rather own than rent a property and because Giffords' lease is very lucrative.

The second issue is whether the city's water plant for Tucson Water can be moved, to enlarge the project and make it more attractive to developers, Hein said. The Barrio Viejo neighborhood thinks the water plant is a good neighbor because it's "what they know," and residents don't trust the city, he added.

Because of those issues, Wesley Miller said "the only thing I like about it is the location." His proposal will be called Barrio Viejo del Sol because every unit will have, at a minimum, a solar hot water system. The project will have 25 percent low-income housing.

Pedro Gonzales, head of the Barrio Viejo Neighborhood Association, said the neighborhood has one big requirement: low-income housing to keep residents and their families in the barrio.

"We don't want no yuppie housing," Gonzales said. "Our main thing is preserve the families in the barrio. That's our main goal."