NEXT DOORS {ahead of the curve}
PHOENIX IS ABOUT TO TRANSFORM ITS OWN VERSION OF CENTRAL PARK Tom Evans | Contributing Editor
I jokingly tell people you can claim you are an Arizona native if you were here before construction of Interstate 10 was done through Phoenix. As hard as it may be for newbies to believe, back in the day you had to actually take surface streets to traverse Phoenix from east to west. The I-10 was completed in the late 1980s, and it wasn’t without controversy. The route of the freeway, as you know, cuts through the heart of the city. Residents of central Phoenix had significant concerns about noise created by the new superhighway. So the planners came up with a fairly unique solution — build a tunnel in a place without a hill. Thus, the Deck Park Tunnel was born as well as Margaret T. Hance Park, which was designed to take the artificial real estate created by the tunnel and create a lush new 6 FRONTDOORS MEDIA | JULY 2018
oasis in the middle of the city. Anchored by the Burton Barr Central Library and home to several key cultural attractions, the park was to be a gathering place for Phoenicians and a point of pride for the community. Except that it never quite took. Some festivals and events have worked quite well at Hance Park, but it’s never quite grabbed the public’s imagination, and it’s not really on the list of places that you want to go to hang out outdoors. Light rail has made the park more accessible, but it has always lacked a sort of je ne sais quoi. It attracted a significant homeless population and a bad reputation, and Steele Indian School Park ended up taking the mantle of “Phoenix’s Central Park.” But now, the City of Phoenix is looking to change that, and help the park reach its potential as a public asset and a destination
