Downtown Phoenix Voices is an ongoing series of profiles on the many diverse and inspirational voices in the downtown Phoenix community. To read the last installment in the series,
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A month after her high school graduation, her lung collapsed. That same year, she cracked a joke to Robert Downey Jr. while working at a movie set. The joke missed its mark and got her banned from the beauty trailer. She attended University of California, Los Angeles, but never got a degree; she traveled to Paris and San Francisco and fell in love with art, architecture and infrastructure.
All of these events led Dorina Bustamante to her office now: a low-lit, comfortable space on the second floor of Monorchid, just above Songbird Coffee & Tea House. Bustamante is a community developer in downtown Phoenix and runs a consulting practice called Continental Shift, L.L.C., which is in the process of becoming Urban Initiatives.
A community developer seeks to improve and grow their local community. Bustamante said she hopes to create a platform for people present their ideas, transforming them from concept to reality.
“For me, to be a community developer means to make dreams a reality on a scale that is tangible for the common man,” she said.
Bustamante’s life centers on finding what the community wants and implementing it. Too often, she said, a large-scale real estate developer spends too much time, effort and money trying to implement a project that is wrong for the neighborhood.
“To be a successful real estate developer in this day and age, it’s important to have a positive relationship with the community in which you’re building amongst. Period,” Bustamante said. “Otherwise, go away, ‘cause we don’t want you here, at least not in Phoenix. Been there, done that.”
One of Bustamante’s most visible projects for downtowners is the Ro2 Lot on the corner of Roosevelt and Second streets. Mike Davis, founder of Davis Architecture and owner of the lot, offered Bustamante a genius grant to activate the space. The venture blossomed into the What Should Go Here? Project, which involved the community in filling the empty lot.
“People said they wanted a green space where there was gardening, or a lawn, or a park or some green. Even if they knew that it was going to be ripped out in six months, they were like, ‘give us some green. Give us green and some shade,’” Bustamante said.
At the time, the Ro2 Lot was a vacant dirt lot. It now hosts green grass, murals and a sculpture known as Peritoneum, which was installed last year.
Bustamante’s intensity and excitement frame her passion for the neighborhood. She attributes her drive for community development to her parents. Her father is a civil rights activist and criminal defense attorney, while her mother works in policy and healthcare for the Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
“I grew up around Cesar Chavez, and going on marches, and boycotting grapes, and questioning authority and also questioning the extremes of the environment in which I was raised,” Bustamante said.
Davis expressed his own impressions of Bustamante’s critical-thinking abilities, also mentioning her Chavez-centric childhood.
“She strikes me as a person who’s politically savvy in a sort of gracious and welcoming way,” Davis said.
Bustamante also recalls her desire to break free from her parents’ lifestyles. Her childhood was submersed in her parents’ world of constant activism and intense careers, which she described as “emergency mode all the time.” Bustamante’s pursuit of the arts bloomed out of these experiences. The arts are her way of finding beauty in the world in the face of injustice, she said.
“I’ve seen my father battle and battle and battle, and thank goodness there are people like him in the world. I don’t want to be like that,” Bustamante said. “I choose beauty.”
Bustamante’s trip to Paris when she was 18 solidified her desire to pursue art. The harmony of the environment resonated with her love for architecture and infrastructure.
“There’s just this sense of place wherever you go, that there’s beauty, there are trees, there’s shade. I mean, every little leaf on the tree on the sidewalk reflects in a direction that makes you feel like you’re in an important moment in time,” she said.
Through traveling to Paris and San Francisco, among other trips, Bustamante came to realize her drive to create the kind of communities she experienced in those cities at home in Phoenix. She was inspired by a blend of the natural landscape and the built environment.
“San Francisco and Paris — they’ve done it. They’ve done it correctly. And those are my ‘aha’ moments,” Bustamante said. “It’s like, ‘Okay, I can live here in Paris and be part of the past, or I can come back to Phoenix and help nurture the future of where I come from. My homeland.’”
Bustamante has been working to fulfill Phoenix’s future ever since. Her motivation has submerged her in the community and in neighborhood-development projects. A large part of her bull-like persistence was instilled after her right lung collapsed from valley fever a month after graduating high school.
“When some people are at the point of ‘your life is going to end,’ and they come out of it, they just choose to take life by the horns,” Bustamante said. “I was like, I’m gonna go get it. Tomorrow is not promised.”
Bustamante’s father, Antonio Bustamante, expressed pride in his daughter’s strength.
“She can back people down just by the sheer strength of her personality and her words,” he said.
With her independence, vibrant individuality and strong convictions, Bustamante has devoted herself to bringing people together through art, architecture and harmony.
“I always felt that art brings everyone together,” Bustamante said. “That’s the one language that race, wealth — I mean, no matter what political view you have — art brings everyone together.”
Contact the reporter at molly.bilker@asu.edu
