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HX_Guy Apr 15, 2010 9:34 PM

Don said that the proposals he saw LOOKED LIKE the ones he posted, not that they were the ones he posted. He wasn't allowed to actually give many details so be just posted examples.

dtnphx Apr 15, 2010 10:27 PM

Canuc, for Don to say anything positive is unexpected to say the least. And because of that (and the fact that these projects are not outlandish) makes it very plausible. We need small-scale infill especially in Central Phoenix. And to HX's point, the renderings were just used to illustrate what may be proposed.

Don B. Apr 15, 2010 11:59 PM

Exactly. I just report the facts...I figured you guys would like to know what I've heard. As to whether any of this happens? Now? Probably not. In a year or two, when people have calmed down a bit and this irrational hysteria ends? Who knows?

I won't be owning property ever again but not everybody is a knee-jerk reactionary like me. :D

--don

Leo the Dog Apr 16, 2010 12:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dtnphx (Post 4796736)
We need small-scale infill especially in Central Phoenix.

Exactly! One condo/townhouse at a time. Buildings with 10-25 units a piece is a great start and would create the type of urban housing that many other cities enjoy.

kaneui Apr 16, 2010 12:29 AM

Bankruptcy case delays auction of downtown Phoenix luxury condos
by Jahna Berry
The Arizona Republic
April 15, 2010

A bankruptcy court dispute delayed the Wednesday foreclosure auction of 182 unsold downtown Phoenix luxury condos. Three creditors of the posh 44 Monroe tower, which is located near First Avenue and Monroe Street, have filed petitions to force 44 Monroe, LLC into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. They are owed $306,465, court documents say. The auction was pushed back to 10 a.m. April 27, but a judge must OK the auction before it can continue, said Phoenix attorney Brian Spector, who is the trustee in charge of the foreclosure sale.

The 196-unit luxury high-rise was finished in 2008. 44 Monroe LLC's lender collapsed and was taken over by the FDIC, which owns a 60 percent stake in Corus Construction Venture, LLC. 44 Monroe LLC owes Corus $86.8 million, according to county documents. Before the recession and the housing bust Phoenix leaders hoped that wealthy condo dwellers in projects like 44 Monroe would help buoy downtown Phoenix businesses.

shawneriksmith Apr 16, 2010 4:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leo the Dog (Post 4796914)
Exactly! One condo/townhouse at a time. Buildings with 10-25 units a piece is a great start and would create the type of urban housing that many other cities enjoy.

I agree...Phoenix needs this small / mid-scale urban development. And, considering the peak in Phoenix real estate was in late 2006, then we are already 3+ years in this downturn. So, if you are a developer, now is the time to start looking for good deals...not 2-5 years from now when there may be more competition for land/construction.

combusean Apr 16, 2010 8:20 PM

I don't think those price points are accurate. If he were rehabbing an existing apartment building or one of those concrete shells on Van Buren I could totally see a price point of $60/$75k for a studio to one bedroom, but while the land couldn't get cheaper, construction prices haven't gone down that much from the boom.

If he bought an existing project that was entitled and had plans for pennies on the dollar and self-financed the construction costs, it might be theoretically possible.

phxbyrd Apr 16, 2010 10:21 PM

Really? Because I think construction cost are down in Phoenix.:shrug:

combusean Apr 16, 2010 11:27 PM

^ By no more than 25% to my best estimate, and gas prices are going back up not just because of summer. No one bedroom in new construction during the boom was sold for less than $250 - $300k to my recollection.

$75k for a one bedroom at 600 square feet, which would be quite small for a one bedroom in Phoenix, would be $125/square foot. Even if you assume the land and plans are free from a foreclosed project, construction prices would have to be down by at least half from what I recall they were for the developer to break even.

Parking is easily $15k on top of that a space.

HooverDam Apr 18, 2010 10:37 AM

http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/...m-phoenix.html

Quote:

4/24: Music Instrument Museum opens in Phoenix
Museum reflects music's long voyage
1 comment by Richard Nilsen - Apr. 18, 2010 12:20 AM
The Arizona Republic
Phoenix becomes part of an epic musical journey this week.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MUSEUM GRAND OPENING
When: Saturday, April 24, through Sunday, May 2. Admission in 30-minute intervals from 8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sundays. Galleries close at 5 p.m. daily and open at 9 a.m. weekdays.
Where: 4725 E. Mayo Blvd. (Tatum and Mayo boulevards), Phoenix.
Admission: $15, $13 for age 65 and older, $10 for ages 6-17 and free for age 5 and younger.
Details: 480-478-6001, themim.org.

When the Music Instrument Museum opens its doors Saturday, it will unveil instruments from every continent and culture, the largest collection of its kind in the world, with 14,000 objects. And in its way, it will become the single largest way station for a voyage that has been going on since someone on the Serengeti whacked two sticks together in rhythm.

Music always has been on this journey. As people throughout history traded wares, exchanged ideas, traveled and conquered, they carried music with them, too.

They carried music as a physical thing, the musical instrument itself - strings and woodwinds lugged on horse carts and clipper ships.

But with those instruments and the musicians that played them came the ideas of music, its pitches and rhythms.

With every note that is replayed, this audible journey continues.

"You can talk about music being a universal language, but that's not really true," says the museum's North American curator, Matthew Hill. "Instead, it's a universal behavior. Like language, they're all different. But I don't know of any human culture that doesn't have language of some kind and no culture that doesn't have some form of music."

From large to small, the instruments in the collection reflect that. There is the 12-foot-tall double bass - an "octobass" - that requires a ladder to play and hits notes so deep you feel them in the seat of your pants. There is the lowly walnut, sometimes used ad hoc in Italy to rap out a beat in folk music.

There is the piano on which John Lennon wrote "Imagine," Hardanger fiddles from Norway and a gamelan orchestra from Indonesia.

But this is a museum where hearing is as important as seeing. Viewers roam equipped with headphones, and as they approach each exhibit, the notes start playing.

The state-of-the-art headphones, given out with admission, are activated by proximity to a video screen. Stand in front of one, and you hear the music while watching indigenous musicians perform it.

"The one thing that's missing when you install these objects is the people," says European curator Christina Linsenmeyer. "So, we're trying as much as possible, if we have an image or a video . . . to use that."

On display are the instruments and the music itself, evoking everything from the travels along the ancient Silk Road to the creativity of contemporary rock and roll.


HEARING A JOURNEY

No one knows for sure where the earliest oboe came from, but it certainly evolved along the Silk Road, that ancient trading route across Asia that Marco Polo traveled and still conjures exotic images in the mind's eye.

You can see the oboe in the Persian sorna, the Turkish zurna, the Chinese suona, all variations of the same name, as well as the same instrument.

It came to Europe, and the name changed to shawm, the Medieval predecessor of the oboe.

And it was taken halfway around the world by Portuguese missionaries to Japan, where it became the charumera and the traditional instrument of noodle sellers, and by Spanish colonists to the New World, where it became the chirimia.

You find a surma in Ukraine, a srailai in Cambodia, a shehnai in India.

The journeys are ancient, but the borrowing goes on. Dave Mason played a shehnai in the 1968 Rolling Stones song "Street Fighting Man."

"That's our whole point: There is no such thing as an exotic instrument," Hill says. "There are only instruments you don't know about."

There is no pop, no art, no folk, no high, no low, he says. There is only music and the instruments that are played.

"And it's not just us who say that. That's how musicians have been since Day One."


INSIDE THE MUSEUM

There are 250 high-definition television monitors throughout, with video to watch and hear, through the earphones.

The museum's permanent exhibits are arranged in five galleries according to continent of origin. All but the North American gallery are divided by country, so there is a Peruvian exhibit, a Thai exhibit, a Lithuanian exhibit. In them, the instruments are often displayed as they are used, together in groups.

"We wanted to group the instruments as they would have been played together so it looks like the band just left the stage for a little while, and you come up and instead of punching a number in an audio-guide, this new technology automatically starts playing the soundtrack to the video you are closest to," says Bob Ulrich, the museum's creator and board chairman.

One of the unintended consequences of organizing the galleries by country is that it emphasizes how much things cross borders.

"Take the polka, and you think of an accordion," Hill says. "But you can't imagine a tango without an accordion, either."


MUSIC WITHOUT BORDERS

Perhaps the most remarkable thing to learn about these instruments is that the music isn't even really about the instruments. It is about the ideas, the people - that musical journey.

The name of one genre popular in the U.S. may be derived from the name of an instrument in a language in Africa. The rhythms of spirituals in one culture can become dance music in another.

King Sunny Adé has sold millions of records playing a type of music called juju, which derives from Salvation Army music heard in Nigeria in the 1930s.

"They just started adding drums," says African curator Amanda Villepastour. "One theory about the name juju is that it comes from a Yoruba word for playing a tambourine."

Adé also added pedal steel guitar, which had previously been used only in Hawaiian music and American country music.

All music is a mix, one culture borrowing from another.

"I was at a conference in Durban, South Africa, at the university there, and I found that the most popular area of study is opera," she says. "Go figure. The music of the White oppressors. They love it. Is it because it represents power? It might be. But they might just love the sound of it, or there might be something in a lot of opera that relates to Zulu music. I don't know what the connection is, but they're nuts about it."

People have been borrowing forever, Hill says.

Take Paul Simon's "Graceland," he says, with its famous rhythms and guitar licks borrowed from African pop. "Is this a big deal, using African musicians? Not really. That's how musicians have been since the beginning."

Asian curator Jennifer Post brings that home when she tells about a trip to Mongolia.

"I might be hanging out in a very remote area with a family in a yurt, and one member of the family says, 'I'm getting on my horse and riding across the border into China to buy a solar panel to run our black-and-white television.' He disappears and comes back. And after sharing a sheep that they've slaughtered for me and sleeping on the floor and all that, they then turn on the television, and we listen to hip-hop from Kazakhstan."

To Hill, the journey of music and its instruments is much like the journey of humanity itself.

"It's not neat," he says. "It's big, messy, complicated, and it doesn't tie up neatly."
While on the one hand its nice to see some culture coming to the 'burbs, I sure wish this thing would've been built somewhere more Centrally. On the dirt lot across from the Art Museum would've been perfect, or on some of the excess surface parking North of the Library or in any of the Dirt Lots in Evans Churchill. Its just so far out there it seems like it may struggle as I imagine it'll have to rely solely on locals and not tourists/convention goers looking for something they can do/walk to.

SunDevil Apr 18, 2010 7:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HooverDam (Post 4800371)
http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/...m-phoenix.html

While on the one hand its nice to see some culture coming to the 'burbs, I sure wish this thing would've been built somewhere more Centrally. On the dirt lot across from the Art Museum would've been perfect, or on some of the excess surface parking North of the Library or in any of the Dirt Lots in Evans Churchill. Its just so far out there it seems like it may struggle as I imagine it'll have to rely solely on locals and not tourists/convention goers looking for something they can do/walk to.

I pretty much see this as a new excuse to have a field trip in elementary school, and nothing much more than that.

Vicelord John Apr 18, 2010 8:02 PM

yup... super lame. Do not endorse.

HooverDam Apr 18, 2010 8:13 PM

Haha a really nice museum with cool new technologic features and is the 1st of its kind in the world is 'super lame'? Really?

Vicelord John Apr 18, 2010 8:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HooverDam (Post 4800848)
Haha a really nice museum with cool new technologic features and is the 1st of its kind in the world is 'super lame'? Really?

yes. Stop contradicting me in every thread. They built what could have been a great opportunity out in the middle of fucking nowhere. It's a bland building surrounded by desert. Could have put on the banks of tempe town lake, downtown, or in old town.

They fucked up.

gymratmanaz Apr 18, 2010 9:38 PM

I agree with John, put it where the people and culture is!!!! Put it in a place where museums are located. Museums bring poeple to other museums and arts outlets.

HooverDam Apr 18, 2010 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vicelord John (Post 4800876)
yes. Stop contradicting me in every thread. They built what could have been a great opportunity out in the middle of fucking nowhere. It's a bland building surrounded by desert. Could have put on the banks of tempe town lake, downtown, or in old town.

They fucked up.

So its all a waste if the location isnt good? That seems silly. Im not contradicting you in every thread, if you say something I disagree with, Im going to mention it, sorry. You wrote a non complete sentence so there's no way anyone could've gleaned you were just complaining about the location either.

Im glad to have what looks to be a World Class Museum in Phoenix. Would I have preferred it be in Central Phx? Of course, but Im still glad to have it.

Vicelord John Apr 18, 2010 10:27 PM

Yes it kind of is a waste. I don't think a Musical Insturment Museum would be a huge draw wherever they built it, but that location where they did build it is pretty hidden. Not many people are going to see it and go on a whim, and there is zero chance they will be at another museum and think "lets hit this one too."

Tfom Apr 18, 2010 10:31 PM

I agree with John. Why do we have desert in the middle of the city and museums in the middle of the desert? How much would I shell out in $3/gallon gas to get to this place?

combusean Apr 18, 2010 10:34 PM

It's practically unsustainable where it is. It's in the middle of nowhere in a cultural wasteland, far removed from every other population center of the valley besides Desert Ridge. They will pay for it in missed attendance, and it'll only reflect badly on the Phoenix area as a whole. It's almost a kick in the teeth that we have this world class museum that absolutely fails at creating any synergy and instead disappears in bland suburbia.

I actually don't think this will stay open very long.

HooverDam Apr 18, 2010 10:57 PM

I think its sustainable but they will be missing out on a ton of people they'd otherwise see attend if they put it somewhere like across from the Art Museum. They have a large endowment so that should keep them afloat even if attendance is low. That Desert Ridge area has filled in like crazy over the past 5 years and a ton of traffic goes right by the MIM every day. They'll get a lot of snowbirds who don't mind driving, people in town for Spring Training, etc.

Heck with the MIM there maybe there's now even a stronger case for a future LRT running up 44th St/Tatum and terminating at Desert Ridge.


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