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Landmark day • Tuesday, September 7, 1999

September 7, 1999: Yes to the Mountains, No to the Canals

One ballot, two answers: better than three to one for buying desert, and a narrow no to a downtown Venice on the Arizona Canal.

Illustrated plaque for September 7, 1999 in Scottsdale history SEPTEMBER 7 1999 THE RESORT METROPOLIS

What happened

At a special election on September 7, 1999, Scottsdale voters decided two questions. Question 1 authorized up to $200 million in general-obligation bonds, over 25 years, to buy land for the McDowell Sonoran Preserve; it passed 25,573 to 7,499. Question 2 would have let the council finance the public parts of the Canals of Scottsdale, Fred Unger's plan to rebuild the failed Scottsdale Galleria and 27 acres along the Arizona Canal around waterways, plazas and museums, by replacing existing sales taxes in the district with a theme-park tax at the same rate. It failed 17,823 to 15,411.

Why it matters

The two results drew the line that runs through Scottsdale politics since: voters would tax and borrow to keep land open, and would refuse public money for private development downtown. The Preserve bonds bought much of what is now the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. The Canals defeat ended the decade's biggest downtown plan, and within three years the council repealed the downtown redevelopment area.

Two questions

By 1999 Scottsdale had taxed itself in 1995 to buy the McDowell Mountains and authorized revenue bonds in 1996. The September 7 ballot asked for more: Question 1, up to $200 million in general-obligation bonds to buy Preserve land. Question 2 was downtown. It asked whether the council could “facilitate the financing of a state approved cultural ‘theme park’ generally located adjacent to the Arizona Canal and Scottsdale Road,” and everyone knew what it meant: the Canals of Scottsdale, developer Fred Unger’s plan to rebuild the empty Scottsdale Galleria and the canal bank around waterways, plazas and museums.

The arguments

Mayor Sam Campana asked voters to “vote ‘Yes’ on Question 2 and The Canals of Scottsdale.” “There would not be a tax increase of any kind,” she wrote; “voters would simply be asked to replace one tax with another for the same amount, only in the 27-acre project area. Mountain preserve and transit taxes would not be affected.” The investors said they would put in more than $458 million of a project of more than $650 million.

The opposition borrowed the Preserve campaign’s own language. “You voted to SAVE THE McDOWELL MOUNTAINS,” wrote the Save Old Scottsdale Committee and its chairman, Barbara Espinosa. “Now we are asking you to SAVE OLD SCOTTSDALE.” Tom Silverman, who would win a council seat the next spring, argued that the city would end up having to “purchase, improve and operate the Galleria for the developer,” in violation of the state constitution’s gift clause, and the Coalition of Pinnacle Peak told the developers “to take their gondolas back to California!”

The results

QuestionForAgainst
1. Up to $200 million in Preserve bonds25,5737,499
2. Financing for the cultural “theme park” (the Canals)15,41117,823

About 33,500 ballots were cast. Campana accepted the verdict in January: “Citizens were wary of the scope and cost of the Canals project and how it might change the scale and feel of the downtown area.” The bonds went to buy land for the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. The Canals of Scottsdale page tells the downtown story, and the 1990s politics chapter the decade’s other votes.