By Brenna Goth | The Republic
Some owners of Roosevelt Row’s shops, restaurants and galleries in downtown Phoenix spent roughly two years designing a proposal to incorporate the arts corridor into a business improvement district, a designation that allows property owners to tax themselves to pay for various improvements.
But less than two months after Phoenix approved parts of the plan, the Legislature blocked it with a bill signed by Gov. Doug Ducey to retroactively change the rules for how districts are formed.
Those new rules, which took effect last month, pose significant barriers to forming the Roosevelt Row district as originally proposed, an analysis by The Arizona Republic has found. They shift the balance of power in the neighborhood and give several opposing landowners more control over its approval.
