The argument that would define the decade was already taking shape. The city had been advancing plans for a Desert Discovery Center — unveiled that summer in scaled-down form as Desert EDGE — an education attraction proposed for the Preserve’s Gateway Trailhead — and a large share of residents, who had taxed themselves to buy that land in the first place, saw commercial development inside the one place they had all agreed to leave alone. The opposition, organized as Protect Our Preserve and NoDDC, had been at work since 2016; by year’s end the council had paused the project and the reckoning was headed for the ballot box in 2018. The Desert Discovery Center page tells the whole fight.
Meanwhile the recovery economy ran at full throttle: the Airpark thick with technology, finance, and healthcare employers, the museum and the aquarium drawing their crowds, the Entertainment District booming, and cranes edging back over Old Town with the height-and-character battles they always bring. Beside the freeway, Great Wolf Resorts and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community announced the Southwest’s first indoor-waterpark lodge. A quiet year in the record — but only in the record.