The Phoenix warehouse district is being seen as the new frontier for the city’s downtown expansion in coming decades. While most of the warehouses are run down and boarded up, one man is looking to rescue as many buildings as possible. We take a look at his mission.
Ted Simons: The Phoenix warehouse district is considered the next frontier for downtown expansion. A number of the warehouses south of Chase Field and U.S. airways center are run down and boarded up. But one man is looking to rescue as many of those buildings as possible. Producer Daniel Santa Cruz and photographer Juan Magana have more on this mission to "Save Phoenix from itself."
Michael Levine: Most of the developers in this town are hedging their bet. They want to make their money first and if the project is successful, it's successful. Sometimes I feel like I'm the thumb in the dike keeping everything back. Because these buildings need to survive, they need to be successful for anyone to really come down here. Otherwise they could be anywhere. Without these buildings, to come visit and to populate and to utilize, they're just it's like visiting a postcard, looking at a couple of pictures. The entire ecosystem, keeping the best of ASU, keeping the best of technology at U of A, those people and those students and that future needs to stay in the district. You could feel the texture. We could feel and see, you know, the material emanation of all of that blood, sweat, and tears and historic equity. I'm fighting tooth and nail, no matter how ugly it is, to keep it from being demolished. We live in a 3D world. We don't live in a 2D Facebook. People want places. They want to congregate. They want to meet and the better the architecture and the more interesting the architecture, the more it stimulates ideas. All those cliches, you have to know your past and you have to know your future. Arizona is always talking about trying to be like Denver or trying to be like San Diego. Phoenix and Arizona needs to be Phoenix and Arizona. And be really prideful of that. And leverage that.
Ted Simons: Levine vows to use all of his resources to make sure the buildings stay intact for generations to come. Thursday on "Arizona Horizon," we'll have more on the DPS report on child protective services. And we'll get the latest in science news in our monthly discussion with ASU physicist Lawrence Krauss. I can tell you right now he will talk about exoplanet and exoskeletons and quarks. And as part as the DPS report on CPS. Charles Flanagan and the investigation into CPS, he will be our guest tomorrow night. Again, that's tomorrow evening, 5:30 and 10 right here on "Arizona Horizon." That is it for now. I'm Ted Simons. Thank you so much for joining us. You have a great evening.
