By Gary Nelson | East Valley Tribune
The heavy colonnades that line Main Street in downtown Mesa have been there so long it could be easy to think they existed when the city center was coming together more than a century ago.
In fact, they are of mid-1980s vintage, the product of one of Mesa’s innumerable efforts over the years to keep its downtown alive.
Truth be told, though, downtown languished for years after the city spent $1.2 million to build them. It has taken the combined impact of light rail, two downtown universities, a $100 million arts center and dozens of entrepreneurs to remove “languishing” from the list of adjectives that could accurately describe the neighborhood.
