Why I Live Downtown - Reason #1
Time and time again, people ask me why I live downtown and I have such a hard time explaining why it "just feels right." Perhaps I can tell them this...Two weeks ago, my 12 year old son and I decided to try out a new little coffee shop, Drip Coffee Lounge. It is only a 2 block walk and it gave us the chance to catch up his latest on-line gaming escapade. When we arrived, the owner, Gina, made us feel right at home. She made my son some "plain eggs" and we had a very nice time. But what is so remarkable is that the next weekend I walk in the door with my friend's mom to celebrate her 80th birthday. Gina immediately said, "Hi, Eva, is this your mom?" I was stunned! She remembered my name and it didn't feel like a marketing ploy. Made me feel connected to my neighbhorhood. Then, serendipitously, look what I found in the Arizona Republic today! I have reprinted an excerpt.
Home-grown urban renaissance
Angela Cara Pancrazio
The Arizona Republic
May. 14, 2006 12:00 AM
On North Seventh Street south of Thomas Road, Gina Madrid serves organic veggie sandwiches where flower arrangements were sold four decades ago. Across the parking lot, around the corner from her Drip Coffee Lounge, Lisa Giungo mixes meatballs from a family recipe inside a 1925 bungalow. Just off North Seventh Avenue north of Indian School Road, pharmacist Teresa Stickler fills prescriptions inside what was a 1960s chicken take-out restaurant. A few doors down from Stickler, her husband, Kurt, a fiery-eyed artist, shapes clay into stylish bathroom sinks. A couple of blocks south of the Sticklers, Bill Sandweg has stripped a transmission repair shop to its bones, back to the 1940s gas station that once stood here. He's pumping another type of high octane: caffeine.
As urban planners move a streamlined downtown agenda forward in Phoenix, there's a home-grown urban renaissance taking place outside the downtown core. Madrid, Giungo, the Sticklers and Sandweg aren't waiting for a "new" downtown to pursue and promote their creativity. They're self-styled new urbanists - do-it-yourselfers - who aren't exactly flush with capital but have created their own spaces. "To me, it's almost the process of the city getting so large that people are looking for a connection where they can go to feel like they live in a community," Phoenix City Councilman Tom Simplot says. "The nature of downtown redevelopment is the big-dollar projects. Whereas the neighborhood projects tend to be more home-grown, they're seizing on opportunity to do something. "In converting forgotten mid-century strip malls, small buildings and stand-alone houses into hip meeting, eating and shopping places, they established hubs that border neighborhoods. They're remaking the city. Corner by corner.
Home-grown urban renaissance
Angela Cara Pancrazio
The Arizona Republic
May. 14, 2006 12:00 AM
On North Seventh Street south of Thomas Road, Gina Madrid serves organic veggie sandwiches where flower arrangements were sold four decades ago. Across the parking lot, around the corner from her Drip Coffee Lounge, Lisa Giungo mixes meatballs from a family recipe inside a 1925 bungalow. Just off North Seventh Avenue north of Indian School Road, pharmacist Teresa Stickler fills prescriptions inside what was a 1960s chicken take-out restaurant. A few doors down from Stickler, her husband, Kurt, a fiery-eyed artist, shapes clay into stylish bathroom sinks. A couple of blocks south of the Sticklers, Bill Sandweg has stripped a transmission repair shop to its bones, back to the 1940s gas station that once stood here. He's pumping another type of high octane: caffeine.
As urban planners move a streamlined downtown agenda forward in Phoenix, there's a home-grown urban renaissance taking place outside the downtown core. Madrid, Giungo, the Sticklers and Sandweg aren't waiting for a "new" downtown to pursue and promote their creativity. They're self-styled new urbanists - do-it-yourselfers - who aren't exactly flush with capital but have created their own spaces. "To me, it's almost the process of the city getting so large that people are looking for a connection where they can go to feel like they live in a community," Phoenix City Councilman Tom Simplot says. "The nature of downtown redevelopment is the big-dollar projects. Whereas the neighborhood projects tend to be more home-grown, they're seizing on opportunity to do something. "In converting forgotten mid-century strip malls, small buildings and stand-alone houses into hip meeting, eating and shopping places, they established hubs that border neighborhoods. They're remaking the city. Corner by corner.
Madrid, whose father was in the Air Force, never stayed in one place very long. Neither did the other families. "It's that Sesame Street song," she says, "it's the people that you meet walkin' in the street."I sang that song but I never knew what that meant." Now when she looks up from her counter, she knows that Matt the airline pilot wants the dog bite cappuccino, Dawn the massage therapist prefers the Himalayan green tea and Brent the security guard orders the strawberry Nutella panini. At 33, Madrid now knows about what it feels like to be part of a neighborhood. Her coffee lounge is a portal into a transforming city.
posted by urbanliving360.com at 9:27 PM
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