Last night, I attended another Radiate Phoenix meeting held at Portland’s Wine Bar which is located directly across from the light rail stop at Roosevelt / Central Avenue. What I love about Radiate Phoenix is their passion for all that is downtown. This is a group of creative, entrepreneurial, care about how Phoenix develops, appreciate good design, have a social conscience, and enjoy converging with an eclectic bunch of people. In other words, “RADIATE phoenix is a non-traditional networking group that meets once a month to support smart growth in our emerging city. It is intended to be an informal and fun forum for connecting people, ideas, and vision.”
The meetings are well attended by a great mix of people. There are artists to architects, students to professors, policy makers to policy changers, small business advocates, urban renewal experts and just about anyone else that has an interest in the core of the city. It is a great way to get plugged in to the downtown “vibe.”
Each month, the group meets at a different local establishment to share ideas about downtown. A guest speaker will normally be featured and will share their story, ideas and vision for the changing downtown that is beginning to shape our community. Last night’s speaker was Don Keuth, President of Phoenix Community Alliance. I have had the pleasure of meeting Don a couple of times in the past as he sits on a line section committee for the light rail project in Phoenix. Don has been instrumental in passing some very important changes in the light rail system and the guy knows “everything” about what is happening downtown. We discussed large and small projects and the effect on creating a more vibrant downtown. Obviously, the light rail line will have an impact on some of these changes. Don gave us more information on the Phoenix Convention Center, the Luhr’s Building, Cityscape, the Omega project, the viability of more shopping downtown and the need for more infill development among other things. If you have a chance to attend a future Radiate Phoenix meeting, we highly recommend it.
At RailLife.com, we encourage people to get involved with the communities along the light rail line. I truly believe these areas are going through a transformation like none we have seen. It has been fun to hear from neighborhood associations, students, community groups etc. along the light rail line. Please let me know if you have a group or association that we can learn more about. Once our site is ready, we want to make it easy for people to get all the information they need concerning the things along the 20 miles of light rail in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa.
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