downtown has potential, but nothing makes you want to go there. You need to attract people with interesting things to do, see, experience. A place to wander and enjoy. Cafes, specialty shops (antique stores a start), artists, local sit and listen musicians (jazz, blues etc.) small weekend local artist only craft fairs, coffee shops,brewery, etc. Get rid of the boring businesses, and give the landlords incentives to fill up these empty spaces and create jobs.(think San Antonio riverwalk) Actually, there are so many empty big boxes and retail shops in Mesa..an incentive program for reasonable rents, etc. would be nice)As for the parks, so many just sit empty, especially neighborhood ones. Mostly because they are just grass, no shade and boring too. A waste. I would go to a dog park IF it was segregated into small, med and large dogs(like fountain hills) and IF the only way I could enter is to purchase a pass that guaranteed my dog was UTD on all shots, and had to be swiped at the gate to enter...to protect my dog. Parks need more trees. A park like the riparian park in Gilbert...with trails, ponds, TREES, wildlife...I would go all the time. The canal trails are a joke, and annoying to those who live along them. Cool places to go in the summer...not just in the winter months. How about a sensory garden, while you are talking community gardens. Clean this city up. If it means starting to enforce codes, tearing things down..do it. Main street is just embarrassing...almost anything south of University is now in mid Mesa. It didn't use to be that way, it has become that. way. WAKE up this sleepy, run down town. I have watched it deteriorate over the last 20 years and it makes me very sad.

Home Owner Building Project. Build yourself 2000 sqf home in 3 weeks in Mesa, no air-conditioning need. Building will cost less and better quality and sound proved. The Material is build out of Lime Stone energy proofed and over 40 years in Europe in use. No molding, no chemicals and robust like concrete. the Ideal property would next to the US 60 140-57-002K //001S. The City could purchase the properties and resell the property, profit ~ 2.5 -3 Million. With this profit the City could add a loan for the down payment to the prospective Home Owner//builder. The benefit would be, small builder form the City could build quality homes, revenue stays in the City and Meas would become a Trademark for energy and cost efficiency homes.

Mesa, and the Phoenix Metropolitan Area as a whole, is covered with wide, unyielding arterial streets. Three lanes in each direction with a center median or a two-way turn lane is the status quo on many of the arterials.

The ideas leading to these wide streets were well intentioned, but the results have been disasterous. The theory goes, build more roads, wider roads, and faster roads, and you can reduce congestion as well as move people from one destination to the next. What it has created is inhospitable streets that feel dangerous to pedestrians and bicyclists, are dangerous for drivers and their passengers, and require massive setbacks for buildings.

This design creates a playground for the automobile, but what happens when a building is no longer a destination? You can see the evidence of that at the former ***** building at Main Street and Lindsay or any of the vacant strip centers throughout the city. The buildings are so far back from the street, they are easily forgotten about. Without great visibility from the street, local businesses have a more difficult time drawing customers due to the increased expense of signage and advertising just to get people to visit their store.

A road diet is exactly like it sounds. It's cutting some of the available travel lanes out of commission and converts them to different uses. Those uses may be a conversion to bicycle lanes, on-street parking, or wider sidewalks among a few options. An example would be if you take Alma School's four lanes in each direction between the Superstition Freeway and Southern Road, and turned it into three lanes each direction. That former outside lane would be ideally operated as on-street parking and wider sidewalks that will support the new streetscape and land use improvements in the Fiesta Mall Plan.

A road diet in the city will allow many developments to take place on and around our streets. The first is that the speeds will be reduced on the major arterials. Currently, even with 45 MPH speed limits, there are no obstacles to persuade drivers to slow down. There is little perceived danger and a sense of openness as drivers can see for miles leading to higher travel speeds than posted, and into more dangerous crashes. The slower speeds would indirectly lead the city to allow shorter setbacks from the street, and with on-street parking they could reduce setbacks even more. This creates a walkable street that is engaging, safe, and lively for more of the day reducing violent crime.

This "road diet" idea has been widely criticized in other cities such as Portland or Seattle as taking away from vehicular traffic, reducing roadway capacity, and catering to bicyclists. Jill Kruse of the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership completed a study entitled "Remove It and They Will Disappear" which indicates traffic congestion reduces when capacity is reduced. The "missing" traffic isn't transferred to another roadway, it simply disappears. What's even more important is that the roads become safer for everyone involved. Peter Swift completed a study entitled "Residential Street Typology and Injury Accident Frequency." which tells us the probability of an accident occuring has a direct exponential relationship with the width of the roadway.

As we move forward to improve the city's sense of community, economic viability, and safety, it would do us all good to slow down in our cars (or even better, get out and walk) and enjoy the local businesses, wonderful parks, and of course the beautiful weather. Mesa has played fourth fiddle in the Valley behind Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe as a place to go to spend money. Improving the streetscape and incentivizing more people to slow down and notice our local businesses will be a boon for the city and improve the business prospects of local business owners looking to open up shop in Mesa.

We the students who are part of the Mayor’s Youth Committee for the Desert Uplands district feel the need for more sidewalks for streets that have little to none. If there are more sidewalks built or a repair of many broken ones, we hope to create a program to provide incentives for families to walk, or ride their bike to work. We plan to have local businesses help in this program with providing reward packages for the citizens that participate. The increase in sidewalks will also increase the amount of customers for businesses that are located on a street that has little sidewalks. People will be able to walk on them to get the store. This program and the increase in sidewalks will promote healthy activity, a cleaner environment, and safer means of transportation for children that walk to school. There are so many ways to get active but many people need a push. I believe that this idea will be a start to getting the city of Mesa up and active.