Media & Immersive eXperience Center

Planning Strategy

The study responded to the question of which one of the 2 parcels of land - one along the canal (Canal Bank Site) and one along the edge of the downtown Arts District (Loloma Site) - would best serve address Scottsdale’s needs. Questions included: What location was most prominent? How will it work with Civic Center events? What impact will it have to adjacent businesses? How will families use this on non-event days? How will parking be addressed? Will this space serve as the starting point/Visitor Center that Downtown Scottsdale needs? As Scottsdale’s leadership watched new development, it became clear that public open space only decline in supply, particularly those areas suited for a wide variety of uses ranging from active to passive, recreation to arts and culture, and those that would serve the full range of the population, including visitors, young families, a growing work force, retirees, and businesses for the long term.

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Given the sheer number of folks moving to downtown for living, business and tourism, land would soon be at a premium beyond increasing real estate values on the horizon. It became imperative to launch the Connectivity project in the name of preservation, as the City develops further into its destiny as a vibrant urban center. Preserving city-owned open public space would leave room for a vital community resource, and an asset enjoyed from near and far. The numbers of available options within the center of town are dwindling, creating a important and lasting opportunity to extend Scottsdale’s legacy of open space, the outdoors, and community.

 

Drawing from successful conditions in other cities, the team began to isolate best practices, and learn from precedent - some parks were established pre-automobile, and some parks fresh and new in transit oriented developments and previously condemned sites. Conclusions and findings:

 

Public Parks are hubs

Public Parks are truly public

Public Parks work when they are full + busy, empty + quiet

Public Parks are permanent components in the ever changing landscapes of great cities

Public Parks are loved up close and From Afar

Public Parks Radiate, Connect, and Build on One Another

Public Parks lead to Economic Prosperity.

 

Scottsdale's City Council achieved consensus with a vote of 7-0 to request the study continue, one parcel at a time, while zooming out to the larger picture at intervals in the process. The proposition of strategically placed nodes and paths was created. Each node would form a park of a certain size, and each path would connect one to the other, with interesting, comfortable, safe and useful experiences along the way. Moving forward would require careful study, universal appeal, and partnerships to become reality. The resulting Master Plan document is not meant to be prescriptive, but articulate of a long term, publicly driven idea – meant not to confine, but expand and grow the city into its next iteration with elegance, vitality and sophistication with which it was founded. The Master Plan document describes how all of the ingredients, when combined, will bring Scottsdale’s downtown to its next chapter, as a vibrant urban community carefully preserving what brought it’s founders here in the first place.

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