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Colorful Lamplight Canvas Prints
Colorful Lamplight Canvas Prints
An Urban Land Institute team arrived in Tucson last week and, after a thorough review of downtown and the adjacent west side, came up with a brilliantly ironic idea. It’s ironic, of course, because La Placita Village was one of the projects built, about 40 years ago, on the ruins of a Mexican-American barrio razed in the name of urban renewal. The Tucson Convention Center and adjacent buildings also took the barrio’s place, leaving a residue of anger that lingers today. They imagine the southwest corner of West Broadway and South Church as a plaza that connects cultural sites from the Tucson Museum of Art on the north to the Museum of Contemporary Art on the south, with a concert hall and theater in between. La Placita is at an important juncture in the streetcar route. The Urban Land Institute team consulted with Lopez and HSL’s executive vice president, Omar Mireles, before making its report. And Mireles told me HSL is definitely into the idea of redeveloping La Placita, but making it into a plaza seems divorced from realities such as how to pay for such a change. It’s almost comical to realize, as I make my way through La Placita’s confusing back alleys, that it was intended to be a modern retail hub that reflected a touch of new world. In other words, it was to be a sanitized version of the gritty piece of mexicano culture it replaced.