Normally I find it difficult to lower myself to the level required to respond to a misnamed “Carefree Truth” in attack mode. Maybe it’s author is running out of people to attack. Anyone with any true in-person-on-scene knowledge of the 40+ year history of downtown knows that the perceived “deterioration” referenced is a direct result of Town action, not property owners, beginning with the incredibly poor decision of a previous administration to ban all tour buses frequenting our downtown – then totally dependent on tourists and visitors – on a regular basis. These visitors often became productive Carefree property owners and residents, unlike some who criticize from a lofty perch on a hill above the destruction created by more than one previous misdirected administration.
Many are aware that about 60% of Town income is based on sales tax produced by retail businesses, but apparently some can’t see past themselves to realize the effect that immediately had to have on sales, which led to the vacant stores. Is the visibility from these perches on the hill so blocked that they can’t see, or would they simply prefer not to ? Are some so busy with their NIMBY activities preventing development of the NEC of Cave Creek and Carefree Highway for decades they miss what goes on in their own Town Center?
As if the tour bus blunder hindering economic development weren’t enough another previous administration gave away enormous incentives solely to a developer trying to develop the (now Hampton) site. FYI – after leaving office that Mayor went to work for the same developer. Despite his generosity, though restricted to that developers site, that development never happened. Apparently potential lenders for that project came to look at the Town Center and found many empty stores with For Lease signs created by the Town’s ban of tourists and visitors. Predictably they nixed the financing. Then to add icing to the Town’s stale cake, this same administration did an end run around deed restrictions and eliminated the centralized parking lot designed by our founders with more foresight than some hillside viewers could see with a telescope. The end result is that two ego impaired administrations eliminated not only tour buses full of spending visitors but discouraged any leftover persistent ones that tried coming by car, not by actions of any property owners who were it’s victims, now under attack despite the evidence.
As to the two historic buildings, among Carefree’s first, built many years before incorporation that are now targets of “Carefree Truth”, a misnomer if there ever was one, both were proposed for extensive redevelopment years ago with improvements equal to and given to several other building owners (two of them were ex-Town Councilmen). Both those two projects were turned down flat, supposedly for lack of sufficient parking, an excuse that the Town conveniently overlooked for certain other building owners and despite the Town confiscation of the parking lot meant to service all these very buildings.
And that is the real truth about Carefree from someone who was here before it was, before “Carefree Truth” was, plus helped create our Town, not simply shouting misinformed 20/20 hindsight from above trying to divide, conquer and destroy it.
Rod de Szendeffy
Carefree resident
