By Gary Nelson | The Republic | azcentral.com
Mesa’s efforts to urbanize downtown and the Fiesta District could fall short unless the city adopts more heavy-handed planning policies, according to an expert who spoke this week at the city’s second Urban Development Summit.
The setting of the Dec. 9 meeting spoke to the already burgeoning potential of Mesa’s downtown core: About 100 developers, investors, city officials and policy wonks gathered on the stage of the widely acclaimed Ikeda Theater in the Mesa Arts Center.
That theater is literally a stone’s throw from the light-rail station that will begin to take shape next year at Center and Main streets, the symbolic heart of the city.
A few dozen yards to the west, downtown Mesa’s first large-scale privately financed project since the 1980s — an 81unit senior housing development called Encore on First — was preparing for this week’s grand opening.
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