City of Phoenix community perspective, looking at one or two things, it might not appear that a lot of progress has been made.” That’s not true, Carrasco said: The adoption of the new transit plans had helped usher in new federal dollars in grants and has promoted new, urban devel- opments along the light rail. “Phoenix has always been deemed the car city,” he said. To start to move away from that was a “huge lift.” Justin Johnson, who sits on the city planning commission and is a developer himself, said that he is skeptical that there is widespread opposition among the community nearby — dismissing the concerns as alarm bells raised by relatively few zealous urbanist advocates in the city. “The community seemed to support the project,” Johnson said, though acknowl- edged “some opposition” raised by village planning members like Rodriguez. Rodriguez countered these claims by noting that no neighborhood residents had called into the local village planning meeting to support the project. New Times could not immediately independently verify this claim and is waiting for a records request for such information. In a city whose housing pool is fast drying up, Johnson said, the development would provide an important new resource. “There is a really big need right now for for-sale housing,” he said, noting that most of the high-rises that have cropped up along Central Avenue in the last several years have been apartment rentals. Furthermore, he said, townhomes were less dense than apartments, but still an urban design. As for the city’s lofty transit plans? “It’s an idea for what we want,” he said. It didn’t mean that developers couldn’t deviate from the plan. Plans for the development include 72 attached townhomes and an exclusive entrance to a public park. Carrasco expressed a similar sentiment. “These are community-based visions,” he said of the plan. Developers might not have to comply with new zoning codes suggested by the city, but the plans, he said, were a sign that the “community is going to hold their feet to the fire.” In the case of the uptown develop- ment, Ed Hermes, the vice president of the Carnation Neighborhood Association, does not agree that the opposition to the project is coming from just a few activists. Hermes lives with his wife and two young daughters in the Carnation neigh- borhood, which is located directly across from the planned site on the other side of the light rail. “We’re pricing out teachers. We’re pricing out the people that work in our community,” Hermes said. “It’s a huge concern.” It’s not immediately clear what it means for neighbors as luxury develop- ments pop up in a mixed-income neighborhood. “People move into Carnation neighbor- hood because they love the walkability,” he said. “These projects are going to shape the neighborhood for the rest of its life, so it’s a bit of a battleground here.” Hermes said he met with the developer to express his concerns about the project. After hearing opposition, some changes were made — such as adding porches on some of the townhomes that connected directly to the street. But Hermes was not yet satisfied, saying that the design was “copy-and-pasted” from other parts of the city. 9 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES MARCH 10TH– MARCH 16TH, 2022
