By Maria Polletta | The Arizona Republic
Mesa Mayor Scott Smith at a recent news briefing elaborated on the four “innovation districts” he announced at his January mayor’s breakfast, hinting that steering committee iMesa could take the lead in how to implement the city’s vision for the four economic hubs.
“(Mesa’s) future … is really related to our ability to create high-quality jobs,” he said, adding that Mesa’s downtown, Fiesta District, Falcon Field Airport and Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport are “places where we believe we have a real opportunity to create an innovation culture and an innovation economy.”
Recent policy-making and infrastructure development already have targeted those areas.
“We have somewhat shifted the focus (of iMesa) from coming up with transformational projects to maybe something a little bit more along the lines of keeping what we have, and these innovation centers work perfectly with what iMesa is,” Smith said.
“We might give them, for example … the task of really finding some innovative ways to maximize what you might do with one of these specific innovation districts. We might find a specific area and have them work on that.”
Tentative starting points for each district:
