To help celebrate National Historic Preservation Month, Phoenix residents who supported the historic preservation projects funded in part by the 2006 City of Phoenix Bond Program gathered at the historic Ellis-Shackelford House on May 25 to celebrate the bond victory and hear a progress report on the projects. Offering comments were HP Bond Subcommittee Chair Mark K. Briggs, Mayor Phil Gordon and Council Member Claude Mattox (pictured above), HP Officer Barbara Stocklin, and HP Commission Chair Donna Reiner. The 45 attendees enjoyed displays and handouts of the funded projects, refreshments, and camaraderie among friends and associates.Proposition 3 (receiving 63% voter approval) completes the rehabilitation of the three remaining 1911 Phoenix Union High School buildings (Van Buren Street between 5th and 7th Streets), slated for the new University of Arizona College of Medicine downtown Phoenix campus. Other funding in this proposition goes towards the Arizona State University downtown campus and various small high school partnerships.
Proposition 4 (receiving 63% voter approval) sets aside monies to renovate Phoenix's historic downtown U.S. Post Office (522 N. Central Avenue) for partial use by ASU, while maintaining public postal uses on the main floor. Funding is also in store for a new downtown civic space south of the post office, including dollars to convert the vacant 1926 A.E. England Motor Company (424 N. Central Avenue) into retail/pavilion space for the park. Rehab dollars for parks in older neighborhoods include funding for an historic amphitheatre at Eastlake Park (15th and Jefferson Streets), site improvements at Coronado Park (12th St. and Coronado Road), and upgrades to downtown's Heritage Square. Also receiving rehab dollars will be the 1917 Ellis-Shackelford House at 1242 N. Central Avenue, intended as a hub for local arts, culture, and historic preservation activities; the 1902 Dining Hall at Steele Indian School Park (Indian School Road and 3rd Street); and the 1941 Matthew Henson Public Housing Project units (7th Avenue south of Sherman Street), now planned to house cultural and youth activities for HOPE VI residents.
Proposition 5 (receiving 65% voter approval) will complete renovations at the 1926 Carver High School (now George Washington Carver Museum/Cultural Center), the community’s window into local African American history and culture. Bond funding will go toward two other local cultural icons, Santa Rita Center (1017 E. Hadley) where labor activist Cesar Chavez fasted for 24 days in 1972, and the 1922 Memorial Hall at Steele Indian School Park for community performance space.
All Arizonans and especially residents of the near Westside will want to be involved in the planning process, funded by Proposition 6 (receiving 66% voter approval), to carefully examine relocating and/or redeveloping the Arizona State Fairgrounds, at its current site since 1905. Proposition 6 also provides major funding to continue the city’s line-up of time-tested and proven historic preservation matching grants: the Historic Exterior Rehabilitation and affiliated Low Income Historic Housing Rehabilitation Programs, and the Demonstration Project Program. A new historic preservation initiative will also help save threatened historic buildings citywide, with downtown historic warehouses as a high priority.
