By Catherine Reagor | The Arizona Republic
The next time you ride light rail or drive along the many main streets it chugs down from Phoenix to Mesa, imagine as many as 25 more vacant lots and empty, rundown buildings along the route.
One of those empty lots would have been on the southwest corner of First Avenue and Roosevelt Street.
That prime corner in downtown Phoenix had been vacant for more than 50 years. MetroWest Development had to move utility and water lines, narrow a street by a lane and close a short, one-way street before it could start construction on the Union@Roosevelt apartments earlier this year.
