August 13, 2005 @ 3:56 PM
One of the little disturbances of man is unwanted development. I happen to live across the street from a "high end" mall that was built on 30 acres of more or less (possibly less) pristine desert. It’s been open for about two years now, but the building process and the battle over whether it should be built at all goes back to 1999.
This land was not on the edge of the desert, rather it was spang in the middle of a pretty select residential area. The neighbors always knew the land was zoned for some sort of commercial development—something called a village center—but when the plans came out calling for a multi-story 490,000 sq. foot luxury mall the poop hit the fan.
Long story short: The neighbors ponied up thousands of dollars in legal fees, fought to reduce the size of the mall and protect a slice of the desert as a buffer. People mourned the loss of "their" desert, which in fact wasn’t theirs. It was owned by the family that sold it.
Now the truth of the matter is that except for some dog walkers very few folks ever visited the interior of that patch of land. Those that did left discarded mattresses, fire circles, booze bottles and so forth. All part of the "wilderness experience." There were some fine old saguaros that were dug up and put in a nursery. Some died, some didn’t.
A luxury food emporium anchors, and anchors one end, of the mall. A feature of this food store is a large covered patio that has become, in fact, a kind of village center.
Since the mall was built I suspect the neighbors see more of one another, visiting from table to table over coffee, than the did in the days before development. The patio has indeed become a sort of village center.
That strikes me as a simply delicious irony.
