Silence was the sound of 2009 — specifically, the silence of construction cranes. Across the city the condo pipeline stood frozen where 2008 had stopped it, home values were still falling, and the construction and finance payrolls that had powered the boom were idle. The decade that gave Scottsdale a skyline ended with nobody building anything.
Except the Preserve. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve, funded by dedicated sales taxes that voters had approved in flusher times — most recently 2004 — kept buying mountain land straight through the bust, and the Gateway Trailhead opened in 2009 to crowds. In the worst economy in generations, the thing Scottsdale residents showed up for in numbers was free desert. The mountains they had taxed themselves to buy turned out to be recession-proof in a way the towers were not.
The visitor economy’s pilot light stayed lit too: the Open, Barrett-Jackson, and spring training in the stadium renovated in 2006 carried on, keeping hotels and restaurants alive until the broader recovery. That recovery belonged to the next decade, along with SkySong’s steady growth and a fresh set of arguments about what kind of city should rise from the bust — all of it in the 2010s chapter.
City Hall changed hands in January, when Mayor Jim Lane and Councilmembers Suzanne Klapp and Lisa Borowsky took office. John Little, acting city manager since 2008, was named city manager in February and left in November, by press accounts; the manner of his exit is disputed. In April the council created a Charter Review Task Force, and in November it sent its amendments to the March 2010 ballot. The council also adopted an updated Downtown Plan, by the city’s account. The 2000s politics chapter has the decade.