There are so many interesting reads and valuable videos out there that speak to issues beyond daily headlines. I figured you might enjoy some curated links that pertain to our Arizona Life.

Close Down City-Owned Golf Courses — I posted this video on Facebook after I read this article in the Republic about how golf course owners are pushing back against the governor’s negotiated deal to reduce water use across the state in the face of a historic drought and shrinking water supplies. It inspired me to issue a call that the City of Phoenix get out of the golf course business. That’s controversial opinion. But, when you consider that each 18-hole golf course uses 330,000 gallons of water per day and the city owns 5 of them, it’s time to re-think what we are doing. What do you think?

This Plant Could Be the Key to Arizona’s Future — Not many people think about water in AZ, especially when it comes to how the crops that we have planted for a century have drained out our aquifer. Alfalfa and cotton use around 30 inches of water to grow in a state that gets about 5 inches of water per year. Get the background in this article, which details how federal policies have encourage these wasteful crops. But it was good news to learn about Guayule, a plant that uses 30%-40% less water than alfalfa and cotton and which is used to make car tires. We need to move quickly to switch to more desert-friendly plants like this.

20 Years of Dreaming — It’s been 20 years since early versions of the Dream Act were first introduced. That’s a long time, with little improvement in the quest for a path to citizenship for about 8 million people. According to Gallup about 86% of Arizonans support a path to citizenship. I was interested to learn about Aliento, a group in AZ that uses Art and community organizing to deal with the drama and stress of this on-going stalemate. It is impressive to see how hard people have worked to keep communities together, despite efforts to divide and vilify them.

Just Transition in Navajo and Hopi Lands — I’ve written before about Just Transition and the importance of helping repair the damage done to Navajo and Hopi (and other non-tribal rural communities) by coal mining and burning. This video really captures what has happened to the communities. Imagine that you have a beautiful home next to a stream. Your parents and their parents owned that home. You love that home. Now imagine watching the water in that stream disappear over just a few years. What would you do. How would you feel? That is what happened to our fellow Arizonans. And not enough people know about it.

Phoenix Needs Your Tree Donation — Planting trees and re-thinking how we use farmland are critical changes that can help us re-capture carbon in the earth. Cities are waking up to this as part of their Climate Action Plans, after a century of removing or ignoring shade trees. Read and comment on the Phoenix Climate Action Plan here. The city has a 2010 strategy to reach 25% shade by 2030. They are far from that. Think about those massive parking lots without shade trees the next time you go to the store. Knowing that they are behind schedule, they are now asking for residents to donate trees to be planted.

Is Your Gas Stove Killing You? — For the longest time, I thought that gas was more environmentally friendly than electric, when it comes to heating water, your home and your stove. That might have been the case when most of our electricity came from coal fire power plants. But, now that those are closing down and more renewables are coming on the system, we can do those things more cleanly with electricity. But, I’ve also learned that methane gas, which the fossil fuel industry calls “natural gas” for marketing reason, is a significant source of pollution in the home. Here’s a funny take on the issue. For my part, I’m looking at getting rid of my big gas oven and replacing it with an induction stove.

Donna Reiner, a local historian and a good friend of Get Your PHX, has written many articles over the years for the Arizona Republic and others about Phoenix history and memorials.  This month, Donna tells us about some of the distinct mid-century modern high rise condos that started popping up downtown and uptown in Phoenix in the 1960’s.

It was the early 1960s in Phoenix when two apartment buildings, both designed by the same architectural firm, became reality.

Phoenix Towers, opening in 1957, was the first high rise residential building (fourteen stories) in Phoenix and built outside of downtown. The lack of additional high-rise residential buildings in Phoenix for the next five years or so appears to stem from politics and apparent disinterest in high rise apartments by Phoenicians.

Chopas and Starkovich, a Phoenix firm, was commissioned to design the Embassy Square Apartments for Green Valley Investments, Inc., and the Monarch Apartments for R. C. Crabbe. They set to work to create two distinctive buildings.

The Embassy Square is an eleven-story structure on the northeast corner of 4^th Avenue and McKinley Street. A conceptual drawing was printed in the Arizona Republic in July 1962, but it was not until November 1963, that ground was broken for this complex. Whether it was height issues that slowed the process, all of the Embassy Square’s neighbors at the time were no more than two-stories high, is not clear. Or it could have been financing problems.

Nevertheless, opening in September 1964, the 80 apartments, most were one-bedroom, came furnished or unfurnished and one could rent by the day, week, or month. Imagine, ads indicate that it was possible to have hotel service for your apartment including maid service for a mere $12.50 a day in 1965! Every apartment had a balcony and the building also had three penthouses. But the most unusual feature was the pool/recreation area construction on the third floor over the main entrance.

The Monarch Apartments now known as the Olympus, on the northwest corner of Maryland Avenue and Central Avenue, were listed as condominiums. This three-building complex ranged in height from two-stories to four-stories.

Breaking ground in August 1963, the Monarch Apartments, so named as R.C. Crabbe was the owner of Monarch Tile Company, consisted of 36 luxury apartments. One ad claimed “The Monarch was not created for temporary living…but for those few who demand quality…and wish to live at an address of distinction permanently.” Like the Embassy Square, every unit had a balcony, there was a pool, and the complex also boasted having four large penthouses on the top of the two three-story sections.

The Regency on Central Avenue and East Hoover was the “last” of the residential high-rises in the 1960s. Recessions, building busts, and a continued lack of interest in this type of living created a lull in Phoenix residential high-rise construction until the 1990s, and now we all know that a large construction crane especially downtown probably means another residential tower.

Even though most of you probably have not heard of Robert Starkovich, he does have an unusual claim to local fame. He was the associate architect with Petroff & Jones out of New York City in the design of BIG SURF.