Author: emailduffy

Downtown Tucsonan

Discussions in APNA and Historic Board meetings often cover things that are occurring in the downtown area. The Downtown Tucson Partnership has a feature on their website that may keep us better informed. Their Downtown Tucsonan page, reached at the NEWS tab (or https://www.downtowntucson.org/news/), will give you articles of interest. If you want a month by month reports covering  announcements, construction, housing and more, go to:  (https://www.downtowntucson.org/2017/10/downtown-pulse/).

Keeping up with the action downtown can facilitate those activities that attracted many of us to Armory Park. On the other hand you may learn of causes for concern regarding neighborhood and historic preservation. It’s a changing world out there; STAY INFORMED.

Help for Homeless Neighbors

As downtown residents, most of us are familiar with the Downtown Tucson Partnership (DTP). Their mission statement is: To be the catalyst for making Downtown Tucson the place people want to live, work, and play; where new ideas happen; and that is the economic development and cultural epicenter of the region. The ability to attract businesses and customers is an essential component.

One part of this effort is to minimize unpleasant experiences for downtown visitors. Unfortunately our large homeless population is often part of unpleasant experiences. DTP has taken a number of steps to discourage homeless people from making downtown public areas their home. One example is cleaning pavements in areas where people congregate overnight. The use of machinery and water spray makes the areas uncomfortable places to sleep.

Continue reading “Help for Homeless Neighbors”

Neighborhood Newsletter                    

From the President’s Pen

February 2018

Greetings friends and neighbors:

This is the first APNA newsletter for 2018.

It’s already been a busy year. In January, this year’s APNA board and alternates met for a strategic planning session. A lot of new things came out of that meeting, many of which you will see reflected in this year’s agendas.

New committees were defined and developed to address all the different things APNA is working on to help make this a better place to live. We are also seeking a stronger relationship with all the wonderful people in the neighborhood who, everyday, do special things that make this a great community to live in. We know we are missing many residents especially those who do not have computers. We want as many voices heard as this is your neighborhood and we want to represent all of you.

This year, like last, development issues will take a lot of time, effort and commitment, to help insure that the development enhances living here, rather than conflicting with our existing community. To do this, APNA has created a standing Development Committee, rather than having ad-hoc working groups.

We have also created a historic committee which will research historic monuments of the neighborhood as well as work with other historic neighborhoods in Tucson and Phoenix to share best practices in maintaining our historic standing, and mitigate over-development both locally and on a state wide level. Additionally, a historic streetscape documentation project is underway to formally document the Armory Park’s streetscape as part of the historic preservation process.

Below are updates on what we accomplished last year as well as what we will be doing this year. Look for the holiday lights contest winners, social gatherings coming up and what efforts are being made to keep Armory Park the unique neighborhood that it is.

The best way to understand what is happening, where, and why is to come to neighborhood meetings as each of the projects that impact us are discussed in real-time; we all have to work together to keep our neighborhood character alive. Please come and add your input to the conversation!

Please watch out for regular updates on meetings, news, and events at our website, www.armoryparktucson.org and our updated Facebook page, Armory Park Neighborhood Association and the Armory Park listserv. And please, let us know how you want to become involved this year!

Email us at info@armoryparktucson.org.

Best wishes,

Anne Cooper, President, APNA

Currents:

Continue reading “Neighborhood Newsletter                    “

It’s Home Tour Time

Home Tour LogoJourney through Tucson’s architectural evolution when downtown denizens open their doors for the Armory Park Historic District Tour. This self-guided stroll offers a glimpse at styles ranging from California bungalow and dainty Victorian to clever, contemporary, adaptations of vintage commercial buildings. (more below) Continue reading “It’s Home Tour Time”

Armory Park Plan Published

Susan Beirer and Steve Grede made a presentation to APNA last May regarding a plan to document and preserve the public landscape (streetscape) of Armory Park. At that time it was agreed that the final document would be added to APNA website when finished. That has now happened and now Armory Park Conservation Master Plan 2017 is available to be downloaded as a PDF. It has been published by the Heritage Conservation Program of the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.

The plan came out of Helen Erickson’s Preservation Planning spring 2017 class.  Whatever your level of interest in Armory Park’s public spaces you will find something for you in this document. If your interest in the history and landscape is not too deep, scan through the pictures and read some of the related text. You will learn some new things about Armory Park. If you are deeply interested, you won’t want to miss a single word.

Contact Susan Bierer (sbierer@email.arizona.edu) with any questions.

Old Articles

I was just searching through the articles in the Old Articles category and realized that the way they are presented could be confusing. All of the articles appear to be written by the same person (me). That is not the case and all of the articles in this category were written by previous authors before I came to the site. When the site was moved to a new hosting platform, I also moved the years of previous articles so that our records and history would not be lost. Unfortunately, the transfer also identified me as the author of all articles, losing attribution to the actual authors. I could see no practical way to preserve the authorship information for so many articles.

If you would like to reclaim authorship of articles, please give me your name, contact information and the article titles. I will make the corrections.