Halfway between the crash and the comeback, the work of 2012 was mostly cumulative rather than ceremonial — though the Arizona Centennial in February brought the opening of George “Doc” Cavalliere Park near Troon, and Scottsdale Public Art staged the first small Canal Convergence on the Arizona Canal downtown. Old Town’s bars and clubs were packing into a few dense, walkable blocks that residents already called the Entertainment District, though no zoning map drew one. They were on their way to becoming a top national going-out destination and a perennial argument at the council — while the Airpark kept adding the tech, finance, and healthcare payrolls that were quietly rebuilding the economy broader than before.
At the ballot box the year belonged to the skeptics. On March 13 voters rejected the city’s new General Plan by 1,064 votes, with fewer than one registered voter in five taking part. The people who signed the pamphlet arguments against it, among them Councilman Bob Littlefield, Kathy Littlefield and Guy Phillips, would lead the decade’s later fights over growth. In August Mayor Jim Lane won a second term outright, and in November Phillips won a council seat.
The next milestones were already visible from here. In 2013 the city would green-light the Museum of the West agreement as the recovery gathered real speed. For 2012, the honest picture is a city in mid-rebuild: prices climbing, offices refilling, and a sixty-year-old slogan — still “The West’s Most Western Town” — waiting on the museum that would finally give it scholarly weight.