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South Tucson to builders: Don't ruin our way of life

SOUTH TUCSON - Ever think about living in a high-end loft above the carnicería? If you have trouble wrapping your mind around the concept of an upscale South Tucson with a hip Latin street scene, consider that modestly sized custom homes are selling for $400,000 just seven blocks from this square-mile city's boundaries, and $200,000 townhomes are selling faster than developers can build them across the freeway that parallels the city's western edge. Ignore the lots crowded with decrepit trailers and the run-down rows of crumbling rentals. Think about this city's heart of well-kept brick and adobe homes, savor the aromas wafting from its restaurants, focus on the bright murals and tile art lining the main streets. Marvel, most of all, at the affordability of homes that are just as centrally located as the ones in the overheated Downtown market just north of here. It took 35 years for Downtown revitalization to creep south to 22nd Street from its roots south of the Tucson Convention Center in Barrio Historico, also known as Barrio Viejo. It's not a stretch to envision transformation another three blocks south, said architect Corky Poster, who directs the University of Arizona's Roy P. Drachman Institute, which studies land and regional development issues. South Tucson officials see change coming - a developer already has asked the city for permission to build shops with residence lofts - and they want to ensure progress doesn't come at the expense of their residents. So they've asked Poster's group for help. The South Tucson Affordable Housing Preservation Study will develop an "early-warning system" and arm the city with strategies and ordinances, Poster said. The goal is to preserve the city's affordable housing and unique culture even as Tucson's investment in Rio Nuevo puts development pressure on areas that neighbor Downtown. "We want to stay who we are," said Mayor Jennifer Eckstrom. "It has to be housing that people can buy. All of us want South Tucson to prosper but not at the expense of the residents." South Tucson, with low housing and land prices and a less complicated bureaucracy, will inevitably attract infill projects and redevelopment, Poster said. Builder Tom Doucette, who quickly sold out his development half a mile away on Starr Pass Boulevard west of I-10, said South Tucson looks very attractive for infill development. "Mentally, I'm already there," Doucette said, though he has no definite plans. "We're looking at some different products now with a little more density, a little more urban feel to them, that would fit right in." Richard Salaz, South Tucson's planning director, said he knew his low-income, predominantly Hispanic city was not immune to speculative investment when he watched the Ice House Lofts go up less than a mile away in an industrial area along the railroad tracks east of South Park Avenue. If you can sell high-end lofts there, Salaz said, you can sell them anywhere. The vulnerable

South Tucson is an "anywhere" that has so far escaped the housing frenzy. It is 81 percent Hispanic, half its residents are renters and 46.5 percent live below the government-defined poverty line. Only one of nine homes sold there recently was priced above $100,000 - less than half of Pima County's median housing price. It is a population particularly vulnerable to gentrification, said economist Eduardo Katz of the Drachman Institute team. Historically, the first residents displaced are low-income renters, said Katz. Then come the poor and elderly homeowners, who can't afford the tax boosts that come with increased neighborhood value. They are followed by residents who undervalue their homes and sell at prices below the new market levels. Finally, there are the long-term residents who don't like the changing nature of their neighborhoods. There are ways to "inoculate" the population against those trends, said Poster. The first is public housing, whose rents don't rise with the market. South Tucson already has 5 percent of its population in public housing and has added to the stock of the inoculated with low-income home-ownership programs by Primavera Builders, Habitat for Humanity and Chicanos por la Causa. A 60-unit rent-to-own complex, built by the nonprofit Development Design Group, is to open in December behind the Food City plaza, west of South Sixth Avenue and north of Interstate 10. Beyond that, said Poster, you can require developers to offer housing at a mix of prices, educate residents about the value of their homes, and use the tax money generated by higher values to offer grants and low-interest loans to residents who can't afford higher taxes. Or you can allow it to happen, as it did south of the Tucson Convention Center where historic adobe row houses command some of the highest square-footage prices in the region. Gentrification politics

Not everyone loses in gentrification and some cities welcome it, Poster said. "If you want South Tucson to look like Barrio Viejo, then our policy recommendation is: 'Do nothing,' " Poster said. City Manager Fernando Castro also sees an upside. "Those things are positive, too, getting younger people to come into the city, people with jobs and education, role models for the kids," said Castro. "We just don't want to do any pushing out," he said. Brian Flagg, who sits on South Tucson's Economic Development Committee, takes a harder line. Flagg lives in South Tucson and is director of the Casa Maria soup kitchen, which serves food to the homeless and the poor just north of the city. Many of his clients are the low-income renters of South Tucson, Flagg said, many of them recent immigrants. "There is land speculation going on, and the people who will suffer are the families that live here," he said. Crossing 22nd Street

There is little vacant land in South Tucson, said Poster, but he has no doubt block-by-block redevelopment is coming. "22nd Street has always been a barrier," Poster said. "It will only take one or two pioneer developers to change that." That's already happening. Albert Lucero is ready to start building in South Tucson. He and a partner have asked for rezoning to build 12 residential loft units with ground-floor studio and shop space at the corner of South Fourth Avenue and East 30th Street. The city is considering a new multi-use zoning classification for Lucero's lots, which are zoned partly for business and partly for residential. Lucero's art enclave would be grouped around a patio suitable for art openings and other events. He figures to catch the crowd from nearby popular restaurants such as Mi Nidito, which always has a waiting list. Planning Director Salaz, who lives four blocks from where he grew up in South Tucson, said his neighbors can't imagine such things, their impressions colored by the city's historical notoriety as a center of drugs, prostitution and sleazy motels. "The thought was, when I was growing up, 'You've got to get out of the ghetto,' " he said. "I left myself in 1973, bought a house at Ina and Thornydale - there was nothing but desert out there. But I found myself shopping here, and my parents and grandparents were here." He moved back. "You can take the boy out of South Tucson," he said, "but you can't take South Tucson out of the boy."