Paradise Lost! Westgate City Center development thankfully collapses under a pile of bills.

  Too beautiful for this world!  All beauty fades eventually and every dream must end.  And stuff like that.

Rebekah L. Sanders over at the Arizona Republic reports that another bloated, gaudy consumer/workers paradise has lurched into bankruptcy and repossession.  This isn't the first one in Phoenix since the crisis began to get into trouble and it probably won't be the last considering where the economy is headed.  But if you've ever been there, you'll know that this place in particular is hilarious.

I used to deliver there for work and it was big on this artificial, corporatized "live, work and play" nonsense.  "I can see my loft from here," said the giant wall-sized youths on the signs, conveniently plastered over the windows of empty, dust-gathering chain stores. This place was a cheap corporate facsimile of a copy of a sketch of the old neighborhoods of old, just with everything that made those kinds of neighborhoods interesting and worth living in stripped out.

With the piped in easy listening mall music reaching up to the balconies of the "loft-style" apartments, surrounded as they are by one crap corporate chain after another and their zombie-like patrons most days, Cardinals fans eight days a year, and shitty arena rock douches on the other weekends, I often wondered just what kind of crap demographic they hoped to attract, and just how they intended to cut them down from the balconies before 10 AM business hours when they finally were overcome by the vacuousness of their surroundings and hanged themselves.

Good riddance.

Part of Glendale Westgate City Center repossessed by lender

The developer who launched Westgate City Center, the landmark sports-and-entertainment complex that helped transform Glendale, has officially lost ownership of the major part of the development.

The core of the Ellman Cos.' project, outside University of Phoenix Stadium and Jobing.com Arena,was repossessed Monday by the lender, iStar Financial, after it failed to sell at a foreclosure auction for a reserve price of $40 million.

The 33-acre property, which features restaurants, shops and an AMC movie theater along with Bellagio-like fountains and Times Square-style billboards, was designed as a suburban sports, entertainment and commercial hub to rival downtown Phoenix.

The remaining land owned by Ellman Cos., 95 acres of mostly parking lots slated for future development, is scheduled for foreclosure auction in November by lender Credit Suisse.

The auction is the latest blow to Glendale's prestigious sports district and another example of how the city has been shaken by the economic downturn.

The Phoenix Coyotes went through bankruptcy two years ago and still have no permanent owner. Now Westgate, at Loop 101 and Glendale Avenue, has been taken away from Steve Ellman, the city's development partner for more than a decade.

Westgate's opening in 2006 was like a launch party for the West Valley, with excitement brimming about the region's future as the flashy complex rose out of farm fields.

The Coyotes played next door, and the Arizona Cardinals had just moved in nearby.

Ellman, the chief executive of the company, called Westgate his favorite project.

At the time, a planning expert had cautioned the project was a gamble that relied on synergy between sports fans and shoppers.

...

 

Beer and Revolution is Back: Activism vs. Intervention with Crudo

by Jon Riley

Phoenix Class War Council's Beer and Revolution returns from a brief hiatus this Sunday. We are pleased to announce this month's installment of B&R will be hosted by our friend and comrade, Crudo, from the Modesto Anarcho Crew (MAC).

Our last B&R in September was a roundtable discussion on Borders & Movement, 30 people attended, including perspectives from CAROB (Central Arizona Radicals Opposing Borders) and the O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective. While we've been very busy, we are glad to know that anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the Valley enjoy participating in a political night, and we will try to continue scheduling a monthly night for speakers and discussion.

We find a lot of value in this event, especially as we look for fractures or fissures in our daily lives, and by making a traditionally non-political space (a bar) a temporary political space where liberatory ideas can be discussed openly. We hope projects like B&R inspire others to look for unconventional approaches to challenging the banality and misery of life in modern class society.

We also find inspiration in the projects of our insurrectional pals from California's central valley. The folks from MAC are busy as hell, giving it a go at building unconventional alliances amongst the discontented and marginalized, from hip hop shows against the recent gang injunctions, to supporting the efforts of the local needle exchange (a harm reduction effort for Modesto's poorer needle users that has seen it's members under attack by the police, please read more here), intervening in local struggles against education fee hikes and the nurses strike, publishing the quarterly Modesto Anarcho paper and Crudo's Vengeance journal and blog, and operating an impressive anarchist social center"Firehouse 51." With a higher poverty level than the rest of the state (which is itself a sinking ship these days), Modesto, and other Central Valley anarchists, have their work cut out for them.

Come out this Sunday for some delicious beers, or perhaps a soda or water for non-drinkers, and some great political discussion, critique, thought, and debate. We wouldn't have it any other way!

The November gathering of Beer & Revolution will once again be held this Sunday, November 8th at Boulders on Broadway in Tempe. The night begins at 8PM, and Crudo will begin his talk at 8:30, come out and have some tasty drinks, meet and mingle with other like minded people, and enjoy another great political social night. See you there!

As spreading European riots hearken the coming age of rebellion, US military and local police prepare for the unrest at home

Iceland's government is on the verge of collapse, most recently seeing the prime minister's car surrounded by people and pelted with eggs before riot police could arrive. Greece sees regular street clashes between anarchists and youth on one side, riot police and nationalists on the other. Widespread revolts in Latvia and Bulgaria against the political class, and signs pointing to social upheaval soon spreading to Ukraine and Russia.

From Times Online

"The financial meltdown has become part of the real economy and is now beginning to shape real politics. More and more citizens on the edge of the global crisis are taking to the streets. Bulgaria has been gripped this month by its worst riots since 1997 when street power helped to topple a Socialist government. Now Socialists are at the helm again and are having to fend off popular protests about government incompetence and corruption.

In Latvia – where growth has been in double-digit figures for years – anger is bubbling over at official mismanagement. GDP is expected to contract by 5 per cent this year; salaries will be cut; unemployment will rise. Last week, in a country where demonstrators usually just sing and then go home, 10,000 people besieged parliament.

Iceland, Bulgaria, Latvia: these are not natural protest cultures. Something is going amiss."

Naturally, the authorities in the USA have not turned a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of people taking the streets to reclaim their lives from the institutions of capital and commerce. In a new report the U.S. Army war college warns that the Pentagon and military should prepare to send troops into American streets when the crisis worsens.

From the Phoenix Business Journal:

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Wednesday of economy-related riots and unrest in various global markets if the financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are hurt by credit constraints and rising unemployment.

Riot police on the streets of Phoenix, 2003

Across the board valley police departments say they are more than prepared for massive civil unrest. In a political climate where the military's Northern Command (northcom) and the Department of Homeland Security work hand in hand with local officials to plan security for the Superbowl, should it be any surprise to see the Mesa police and the Army's 3rd Infantry Division defending a bank sometime soon?

Again, from the Phoenix Business Journal:

State and local police in Arizona say they have broad plans to deal with social unrest, including trouble resulting from economic distress. The security and police agencies declined to give specifics, but said they would employ existing and generalized emergency responses to civil unrest that arises for any reason.

“The Phoenix Police Department is not expecting any civil unrest at this time, but we always train to prepare for any civil unrest issue. We have a Tactical Response Unit that trains continually and has deployed on many occasions for any potential civil unrest issue,” said Phoenix Police spokesman Andy Hill.

“We have well established plans in place for such civil unrest,” said Scottsdale Police spokesman Mark Clark.

Clark, Hill and other local police officials said the region did plenty of planning and emergency management training for the Super Bowl in February in Glendale.

“We’re prepared,” said Maricopa County Sheriff Deputy Chief Dave Trombi citing his office’s past dealings with immigration marches and major events.

We all know the spring kicks off early and is often short lived, the summer grows in intensity and length as our humanity's climate change nightmare continues. So, with the probability of a longer, hotter summer, will it the sun be the only thing burning up the streets of Phoenix? London School of Economics economist Robert Wade predicts large scale civil unrest beginning in the spring of 2009:

“It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds of millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse not better; and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international.”

Stay tuned.