
Blame the Banks for All Those Boring Chain Stores Ruining Your City - panic
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-22/blame-the-banks-for-all-those-boring-chain-stores-ruining-your-city
======
taxicabjesus
> Not long after he leased out the shell of a once-iconic Phoenix steakhouse,
> developer Lorenzo Perez got an email from a broker. He learned that the new
> space, now home to an award-winning restaurant, a small garden store, and an
> independent bookshop, was worth about $195 a square foot.

Was curious, found an article which said that the restaurant was Beefeaters
[1]. The independent book shop is the second Changing Hands [3], whose
location in Tempe has been doing very well for 40 years[2].

[1] [http://www.phoenixmag.com/valley-news/meet-the-
newton.html](http://www.phoenixmag.com/valley-news/meet-the-newton.html) [2]
[http://www.changinghands.com/40th](http://www.changinghands.com/40th)

[3]
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Changing+Hands+Bookstore/@...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Changing+Hands+Bookstore/@33.5096971,-112.0793562,19z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x872b12c3cb044a61:0xfb5d1e0889caeab4!8m2!3d33.509696!4d-112.078809)

This part of Phoenix is an interesting blend of poverty and wealth. Central
north of Camelback has some very nice properties.

Missouri Ave, 1/2 mile to the north, gets progressively wealthier the farther
east you go. At 24th St (3 miles from Central), Missouri ends at Frank Lloyd
Wright's Biltmore Hotel... The houses around here all priced in the multi-
million dollar range.

Missouri Ave gets progressively worse the farther west you go. My aunt used to
have a house at 11th Ave & Missouri... It was a perfectly normal middle-class
neighborhood, with small post-war homes.

I helped a guy move his family from the cheap motel at 7th Ave & Van Buren to
the sketchy apartments at 21st Ave & Missouri (3 miles to the west of Central
Ave)... I think he said his kid had started a fire at their last place.

