By Derek Neighbors, Published on January 12, 2011
The Greater Phoenix Economic Council released a report touting that Skysong actually is exceeding expectations and has been underestimated. Citing a $113 million impact which is largely calculated using salaries of people that have worked there over the last five years.
The reality is that the ASU Foundation remains unable to repay the city for it’s investment as originally agreed upon because of a poor real estate market. This is because Skysong was a land developer deal from the very beginning. It’s success depended on renting commercial space (paid for by the City) or selling the buildings. Remember Arizona still believes that real estate is where it is at for Economic Development.
Tired leadership repeating the same shitty land development shenanigans finally get bit. What do we do? We cover it up by putting out fluffy numbers saying see its not a complete loss at least it is doing “some good”. Phoenix if we want to succeed we have to stop settling for this mediocre bullshit. Let’s call a duck a duck. Skysong has been a miserable failure. Kudos to those running it for not allowing it to be a complete and utter loss and salvaging what they could and trying to make it better for the future, but it still falls WAY SHORT of expectations. Expectations that THEY SET.
Failure is okay. Not learning from it is the problem. Our inability to reflect on projects like this and determine why they failed and prevent them in the future is what is holding us back. Until we can learn to criticize and learn from our failings we are doomed to repeat them.