Tucson Looks to Santa Cruz River Rebirth as Key to Development

Elvira Kunde can recall walking through shallow water in the then tree-lined Santa Cruz River when she was 7 or 8 to go swimming in a nearby irrigation ditch.

“There was a lot of vegetation, and my father said that vegetation was good, because the water couldn’t get to the banks,” she says. “It had a lot of trees along the river. There were great big ones, tall.”

That was 75 years ago. By the time she was 11 or 12, the life-giving river that flows north from Mexico, the magnet that drew the earliest settlers to what is present-day Tucson--Indians, then Spaniards and later Mexicans, finally followed by Anglos--had run dry, with only an underground flow except for the rainy seasons or, rarer still, flooding.

Today, the dry river and its steep banks, once lined with cottonwood trees and now reinforced with soil cement to resist erosion, resemble a barren moonscape. But the city is pushing efforts to change all that and restore water to the Santa Cruz.

City and county officials, eager to spur downtown revitalization, want to see a series of mixed public and private projects sprout up--water in the river, tree-lined banks, completion of a river park. They also want to develop adjacent areas as an economic and cultural springboard to draw Tucson residents and tourists back downtown. Overall cost estimates have ranged to $100 million.

Some envision a riverfront development on the order of San Antonio’s famous River Walk.

“We don’t want to duplicate it,” says Lillian Lopez-Grant, a member of the city’s Santa Cruz Advisory Board. “But it’s certainly a good example of what can be done when the community comes together with the government and the private sector.”

Others suggest an inflatable dam several miles north to help assure at least a low, steady, water presence.

No one envisions water flowing bank to bank. But the possibility of using treated effluent, as well as water from the Central Arizona Project, could put thousands of acre-feet into the river.

Still, not everyone accepts the premise of flowing water.

“The trouble with the Santa Cruz is it’s an underground river; the water seeps down through the sand and disappears,” said Roy Drachman, a 92-year-old native and pioneering-family developer who also recalls the river as “very much of a trickle” when he was a boy.

“If they want to have water to have boats, they’re just whistling Dixie. . . . I can’t help but think they’re smoking something.”

Requests for proposals became available to developers this month,due back by March 30.

Proponents want to ensure that what is developed reflects Tucson’s historic and cultural past.

“The Santa Cruz is sort of the cradle of Tucson, and if we could put something meaningful in, in terms of design and history, that would provide some history and a place of being regarding Tucson,” said Kennith Foster, director of the University of Arizona’s Arid Lands Studies program and another member of the advisory board.

It’s important to create something visually and aesthetically pleasing to lure residents and visitors downtown, as well as motorists off the interstate, Foster said.

A San Antonio-style development is “interesting, fascinating, possible,” said Jack Camper, president of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. “The core of our community needs to shine again, and this would give us an opportunity to do that.”

Albert Elias, a city transportation planner, said the various projects would be linked with the notion of conveying the history of the river. One is the Gateway Project, to feature sculpted stone blocks depicting the Convento site where Spanish missionaries settled in 1775.

People have lived in the Tucson area for thousands of years “because there was water” in the river, Elias said. “Now that the water is gone and it’s not as attractive, we’ve lost some of the history.”

The river was transformed after a major earthquake in 1887 in northern Mexico and flooding in 1890 and 1904. It went from being a low, wide, meandering and marshy flood plain dotted with vegetation to a waterway channeled 40 or 50 feet deep and a hundred yards wide in spots. The drinking water needs of a growing community eventually caused water and vegetation to disappear.

A 44-acre, city-owned, undeveloped but historical area called Rio Nuevo South, just west of the river and downtown, would be the prime target for commercial and cultural development.

Advocates would like to see two or more museums relocate there, including the Arizona Historical Society, along with restaurants, shops, a movie theater complex, perhaps a hotel and maybe an amphitheater.

“I always thought Tucson should have someplace where it could demonstrate its Spanish culture and history,” said Robert Shelton, former owner of Old Tucson Studios, who hopes to help develop Rio Nuevo South. “This is a project that needs many important elements.”

Lopez-Grant has lived in adjacent Menlo Park for 55 years. “Developers have come and gone and politicians have come and gone and we’re still waiting for something good to come along,” she said. “We need jobs and economic opportunities and educational opportunities, and I think we’re finally on the road to those goals with this project.”