Phase II of development proposals for the Ronstadt Transit Center downtown were unveiled last week during a public meeting. Despite what we may have read or heard, not everyone is a fan, though. 

Development plans bring fear of gentrification. We’ve already seen long-time Tucson characters like The District (and others) shutter over high-as-hell rent. While growth is good, watering down the diversity that is downtown Tucson will birth harsh resistance from critics. 

Local homeless advocate and one of the heads behind the Tucson Bus Rider Union Brian Flagg wrote a quick reminder on the blog Voces de Casa Maria that not all is good in the RTC-development-front:

I feel bad because I was stupid enough to allow a reporter to take my words out of context and misrepresent me (“Early Reactions to Ronstadt Plan Positive” Arizona Daily Star, 7/27/2015, http://tucson.com/news/blogs/road_runner/early-reactions-to-ronstadt-plan-positive/article_bd1028a0-55ff-5c75-828e-9ed345103ec4.html) I should have known better. I should have been more disciplined.

He quoted me to the effect that both plans were fine with me.

What I told him was that I would be most happy if both plans disappeared from the face of this earth because ultimately they both mean more gentrification (the process by which those with capital invest in lower income places, gradually making them more yuppie and white, while lower income folks get displaced).

I told him that largely because of the actions of the Tucson Bus Riders Union the City Council has declared that the transit footprint, the transit function, at the Ronstadt would not be reduced. So that became a bottom line for both development plans. I told him how we at the Bus Riders Union see this as a struggle to make it so that bus riders, many of which whom are low income, are not gentrified out of downtown.

I was also clear that the Peach plan was much more conscious of the needs of bus riders and that the Alexander plan seemed much more concerned with historic preservation. I told the reporter that making bus riders enter the center through turnstiles (the Alexander plan) was obnoxious and a mechanism for social control.

City Councilman Steve Kozachik mentioned the meeting on his weekly newsletter, saying the development will be a “benefit to the entire Tucson area, not just downtown.”

He, other city leaders and the public got to hear about two proposals—one from the firm Alexander/Campbell and another from Schwabe/Swaim—that include retail, housing and the transit portion. The Alexander/Campbell plan has a cost of about $50 million, while Schwabe/Swaim say it’ll cost more than $170 million. Both groups mentioned they’d involve local designers, as we all hope they should.

Kozachik says both would require “some level of public funding involvement, but only the Alexander/Campbell team identified what that would be and at what level.” (Any public funding for either one of the proposals would have to be OK under the Arizona Constitution’s Gift Clause.)

At the meting, residents handed the development teams a series of questions that should be answered in the next 30 days. There will also be final recommendations from the committee selecting the team that will take on the project. After that, a winning proposal will be chosen, which Kozachik says should come by the middle of next year. 

“This is a big economic opportunity for the region. Six years ago, the City was on the cusp of making a very bad economic decision: building a luxury hotel and using the City’s General Fund as the backstop of the financing. We avoided that mistake, and now we have a chance to take this huge step in the right direction,” he says. 

This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2015.

I was born and raised in Guatemala City, Guatemala. I moved to Tucson about 10 years ago. Since I was old enough to enjoy reading, I developed an interest in writing, and telling stories through different...

10 replies on “Development Proposals for the Ronstadt Transit Center Making Progress, Is Everyone Really OK About It Though?”

  1. Downtown must be preserved as is. Where else can Occupiers go to live, beg, sell drugs and defecate in the streets.

  3. Maybe I’m confused but the area around the Ronstadt Transit Center is primarily commercial, not residential. So Flagg’s contention that “gentrification” is inevitable and awful is a puzzler. Seems more folks would be moving in to a new mixed use (residential.commercial) district, not displacing those already living there. Ranting that “those with capital invest in lower income places, gradually making them more yuppie and white, while lower income folks get displaced” is misplaced and gratuitous.

    Tucson is just beginning to climb out of the third world as it recognizes the need to clean up its act and grow a tax base supported by new downtown residents and business establishments. As a side note: I lived in Philadelphia for years taking buses and subways daily. I wasn’t aware that turnstiles were a mechanism for social control (other than controlling to some degree the low lifes attempting to ride for free).

  4. I’m sure the city of Tucson will kick in some kind of incentive to the developers, at the tax payers expense. Given a choice of spending 50 mil. or 170 mil., the mayor and city council will always select door #2. We do need a larger, more dependable tax base, maybe the politicians would like to chip in. OR, they could reduce the spending, try cutting pension programs, they already use up 40% of the budget.

  5. Brian Flagg – “gradually making them more yuppie and white”

    Well that does it then. We can’t be having any more white people downtown.

  6. White guilt attacks white privilege (freedom of movement) and we have no winners. So they try to blame everybody and hold the country hostage.

  7. Brian Flagg is a great guy and works hard to help homeless people, but his sense of entitlement makes him oblivious to some facts-soup kitchens like Casa Maria need funds to work, which come from outside sources (mostly from those terrible gentrifiers). If you gradually destroy an entire neighborhood and part of South Tucson with a soup kitchen, saturating the area with homeless people who defecate against buildings (including public art on 4th avenue south of 22nd street), set some others on fire (watched this happen)-burning down an entire air conditioning business, help populate an entire park with druggies to the point where it has become almost completely useless for normal people, I feel that one should not give advice but first work to undo the damage he has done.

  8. Is Mr. Flagg mentally ill? How many of his homeless patrons are white? He doesn’t want more white people downtown? Maybe he should move to Detroit.

    Why does diversity always mean less white people? We need diversity in South Tucson too.

    I weathered the storm of the far right neocons and their war-mongering and dismantling of the middle class, I will weather this current crapstorm of social justice warriors and 3rd wave feminists who want to take away my rights under the guise of equality.

  9. Dear Brian Flagg, please remove the picture of the white child in the food line on your website, it is becoming too gentrified.

  10. “gentrification (the process by which those with capital invest in lower income places, gradually making them more yuppie and white, while lower income folks get displaced).”

    A laughable definition.

    A better definition for gentrification is “taking unsafe sh##holes and turning them into places where families and people are willing to go.”

    People who get all nostalgic about about formerly drug and prostitute infested cesspools are buffoons.

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