Mayor Bob Walkup, whose ward is the entire municipality, has given a disproportionate amount of his allocation to efforts downtown.
This begs the question: Is this really smart?
Walkup's heart and motivations are in the right place; I don't doubt that. I mean, given the choice between a vibrant, healthy downtown and a dead, crappy downtown, what would you choose for your city?
But let's face the facts: Downtown already has a lot of efforts--and money--behind it: the Downtown Alliance, Rio Nuevo, etc. And despite these best efforts, the vast majority of Tucsonans don't set foot downtown once a month, let alone once a week.
Therefore, should the mayor be placing such an emphasis on downtown, seeing as most of his constituents aren't directly affected by what happens there?
That's Mayor Walkup's call entirely, I guess.
It's worth repeating: We ALL want downtown to succeed, and it is something that all Tucsonans should try to make happen by supporting worthy downtown businesses and events.
But at a certain point, there can be too much support--when that support is yielding too little in the way of results and too much in the way of efforts, at the expense of the rest of the town.
I don't think Tucson's reached that point yet--but we should all be watching to make sure we don't.
