From Joan Hall, president of the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association on the neighborhood, the city and mini-dorm developer Michael Goodman’s ongoing dispute on the city’s definition of single family zoning and group dwellings:
Dear Neighbors and Friends,
JPNA, the City of Tucson, and mini-dorm developer Michael Goodman have tentatively agreed to mediate, over the next month, the issue of Goodman group dwellings (“mini-dorms”) in Jefferson Park. We are hopeful that this will lead to a City-wide determination with a clearer and broader definition of what constitutes a group dwelling.
Therefore, the hearing that was scheduled for tomorrow, July 27th (Weds), will be postponed to the Aug meeting. We will let you know when that is.
We still need a show of support for this issue, so keep sending your comments to Ms. Russlyn Wells at Russlyn.Wells@tucsonaz.gov and to your Councilmembers and the Mayor. Case numbers are C10-11-07 and C10-11-06, and comments might say “We support the efforts by JPNA and its negotiating partners to resolve, for once and for all, the issues of group dwellings in low density residential neighborhoods.”
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2011.
And so it goes. For me, a lingering frustration in Tucson’s “mini-dorm” saga is the term itself. To those just tuning in, I fear it implies the literal: a small dorm. Picture that, and you’ll likely garner nothing of the neighborhood menace these things really are.
A better term might be “party house.” These dwellings, much unlike the university-owned student housing, are not for kids on student loans. They’re not leased to students from foreign lands, or probably even those paying in-state tuition. They’re not for chemical engineering or pharmacy majors. They’re for the sons and daughters of California and East Coast aristocrats who came to the U of A to party and make connections. They’re designed to be safe places for four or five young Pi Kappa Alphas to get drunk and high and play video games. They have gated front yards to shield their inhabitants from angry neighbors and cops, and big garages to protect Jersey-plated SUVs. Their advertisements boast amenities like “jacuzzi tubs” because… you know, Tucson needs more “student housing.”
Goodman knows full well what he’s doing. He’s serving a clientèle our Regents ought to be ashamed of: wealthy, white out-of-state undergrads who could afford to go anywhere but couldn’t even get into the Florida schools. He’s in the party house business, providing expensive party bunkers to Tucson’s circulating population of drunk frat boys and sorority girls. He is indeed capitalizing on the much-publicized shortage of “student housing.” But the very particular kind that is his cash cow is what wrecked Feldman’s and is wrecking Jefferson Park. He’s building the worst kind of dwelling for the worst kind of “student,” and it might be helpful if the community understood this.