Despite community outreach efforts, longtime Phoenix residents voiced concerns about the light rail extensions coming to south Phoenix at Wednesday’s city council meeting. The main topic of contention was the proposed two-lane reduction of vehicular traffic on Central Avenue, which many felt would impact their businesses.
Antonio Contreras spoke on behalf of a number of residents, business owners and property owners in the group 4 Lanes or no Train, saying the reduction would impact their ability to maintain their way of life.
“We have built up our clientele throughout the years, many of which only know us by our location,” he said. “We have seen in other areas the destruction of businesses and we cannot stand idle as this happens down Central Avenue. The four-year period of construction would devastate our businesses.”
Despite previous and upcoming community meetings discussing design elements, Contreras was critical of the city’s outreach efforts.
“The decision of the current plan was made without proper or expansive community input,” he said. “The importance of the decision being made was not communicated to all impacted people.”
Other business owners, like Lo-Lo’s Chicken and Waffles founder Larry White Jr., spoke to the council about previous issues with light rail construction.
“I already lived through it once,” White said. “I am the grandson of Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Cafe. They’ve been in business since 1964, so when light rail started construction back in ‘99 or 2000, they didn’t complete it until 2006. For six years my family’s business suffered and I think the same situation would happen to Lo-Lo’s.”
Others, like Siho Lee of Central Mart, echoed these sentiments.
“We’ve heard from dozens of sources and other businesses that they’ve suffered from lengthy construction times and problems with traffic congestion and a reduction of lanes,” he told the council. “We want to see the light rail redesigned as outlined earlier. We want four lanes for cars, not a reduction of two lanes. And if we can’t have that then we want no train at all.”
Others pointed out that other Phoenix areas didn’t have their lanes reduced to accommodate the light rail.
“Everyone else has four lanes,” said Mel Martin, a longtime businesses owner in south Phoenix. “Now they want us to starve to death on South Central.”
He called for a public hearing, saying that community petitions were currently being gathered and would be presented there.
Lincoln Ragsdale Jr., owner of a funeral home and dialysis center in south Phoenix, brought up the unfairness the area has encountered.
“South Central was a redlined area,” he said. “It was mainly ethnic and the city didn’t want to go down and buy pieces of property to make it four lanes in the process of experiencing the construction.”
District 6 Councilman Sal DiCiccio also questioned the treatment of the area, addressing the council itself.
“The north side, which is the wealthier side, gets the four lanes, and everything south does not,” he said. “I’d like to know why this happened.”
Two more community meetings are scheduled for March 24 at Harmon Library and April 4 at South Mountain Community Center.
Contact the reporter at Rebecca.Speiss@asu.edu.
