Tempe Historical Museum Oral Histories

SOLLIDAY: I wanted to ask you about, with the Rio Salado, what we've started now, with the groundbreaking, everything seems to focus on engineering. When you started this project as a project for architecture students, it seems like that was very different -- the difference from architectural design to actually the engineering that's required to make that happen.

ELMORE: Well, we didn't ever really get that specific, down to engineering. It was strictly conceptual. We started it because the year before, in '66, we had completed a year- long project in which all of the classes, the five levels of the college, focused on a project that we called collectively "Valley Focus '66." And we thought that was quite successful, with the publication that came from it. And I thought that this is a good thing to have the whole college with a single focus. So I said, "Next year let's do something with the river." And so that's how it started. The fifth-year class, in the fall semester, came up with the concept of putting water back in the river. And they showed even how it could be put there by just a matter of rerouting the water in the Grand Canal, which would do it. Well, it would work, but it really turned them on to see the possibility of water there and what it could do. So there are some pictures of that. You might want to go to the slide library in the College of Architecture. There's a notebook there on file, full of slides in transparent sleeves, that show -- they go beyond this. But this will tell you a lot too. You have a place for tapes in your operation?

SOLLIDAY: Yes, we do have a video tape library. Now, you said slides. Is that in the Architecture and Environmental Design Library?

ELMORE: Yeah, downstairs in the old building, which to me was the new building. (both chuckle)

SOLLIDAY: Okay, because I'd looked at a lot of things they had there, and I hadn't seen any slides, Though. I'll have to go and take a look.

ELMORE: Well, ask Diane Upchurch for the Rio Salado notebook. See that white one right up there, with the two black dots? (SOLLIDAY: Uh-huh.) Well it's a notebook like that, that's full of 8« x 11 sleeves that show 20. But they're essentially what's in here. So anyway, those are sources that I think are more comprehensive than anything I can spin off the top of my head right now. Did I answer your question at all about how it started?

SOLLIDAY: Well, as it started -- let's see now, that was in '66, was it? (ELMORE: Uh-huh.) And as a student project, I know that there's lots of things to plan on putting together as an exercise, but at what point did you realize that this was something that could actually be done?

ELMORE: Be done? Well, I think architects are born optimists. I mean, particularly when we're younger -- we think anything can be done. But I think what turned it on mainly to me, when I realized what was going on, was the day that Dave Fulton burst into my office all excited. They had found a map on which the river was label Rio Salado. So that became the name of the project. And he seemed to realize, as I did, that the project had a handle that people could grasp it by. Of course now we have Rio Salado Community College, Rio Salado Wrecking Company, and Rio Salado Barber Shop. But the Rio Salado Project, I think was the first that came on the scene. So. . . . Well, we went through three phases, which will be described here, and had a public presentation at the end of each one. And on the third one. . . . With each of them we grew more detailed in a smaller area. The first project was, I think they called it "38 Miles Long." And then we focused on the area just north of the campus, which is essentially where the town lake is. And WE filled a town lake, too. And there's a picture of that somewhere. And then in the fall of '69, at the end of our third phase, we made a public presentation at the Safari Hotel, a day-long conference there, at which Larry Murren, who was the founding president of the Arizona Academy that produces the State Town Halls, made the motion that Valley Forward would be asked to assume the leadership of the project, moving it out of academe into the real world. And Valley Forward was just forming at that time, and I was a founding member of it, and they asked me to chair the Rio Salado Steering Committee, which I did for the whole decade of the '70s. And the. . . . We conducted several studies through that. This is one of them. They came back to the College of Architecture in '77, I think it was. But Valley Forward was instrumental in securing passage of the bill that created the Rio Salado Development District, which for the next seven years developed a master plan and recommended the method of financing, and this all came to a head with the election in 1987, at which it was defeated. Not as a concept, but as a method of financing, 25› per hundred [$100] property tax. And so we all thought it was kind of dead then, except Harry Mitchell, who was Mayor of Tempe, said, "We're gonna do it!" And they're doing it. (pause) It was the method of financing that was turned down, not the concept, and we realized it from that point on. It's happening just as a part of the normal processes of city-building: Tempe is doing its thing; Phoenix is doing its thing. Phoenix is a little slower than Tempe. And Mesa is hardly off the ground, but it's happening that way. It's happening, but cooperatively, and Valley Forward is back in a positive, active role in promoting it. I went to a meeting this morning that must have been 50 people on the committee, that are going to promote the project. I don't know if that's giving you what you want or not.

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, it kind of covers the whole thing right there. I think that. . . . One of the things I noticed -- I'm not sure what point this came in -- but the issue of flood control, especially with the floods in '78 and '80. Was that something that you were thinking of?

ELMORE: Oh, that was always a problem to be dealt with. One of the earliest studies back in '72 or '73, I think, was built around rubber dams. And in all of the later phases, flood control was a part of it. This study was commissioned to us by the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers to develop the recreational possibilities that would be made possible with the advent of flood control. But of course we, not being engineers, didn't ever get into the engineering design of it. That's in hand now.

SOLLIDAY: It just seems a little bit surprising to me that today most people have no idea of the flood control aspect of it. They see just the lake and think that that's the whole reasoning for it.

ELMORE: I think it's been pretty well publicized, these dams. That was certainly very evident in the groundbreaking [on August 8, 1997]. You weren't there, were you?

SOLLIDAY: No, I couldn't make it there that day.

ELMORE: Well, I think everybody understands it pretty well. I had an amusing thing happen just yesterday afternoon at the gym. A guy that I know there identified me to a new person as having something to do with the Rio Salado, and the guy said, "What are you going to do about mosquitoes?" (Solliday chuckles) I'd never heard that one before. I've heard about flood control and things like that. Well, I just said, "We're not gonna let 'em in!" (laughter) I just figured a foolish question, foolish answer. But you know, I believe that as a result of this symposium, and even leading up to that, most people know what Rio Salado is. They have embraced the concept, I think. And it's, I think, pretty well received. There are always people who are naysayers, because that's their claim to fame -- just say no to something. (pause)

. . .

ELMORE: . . . I've made a lot of Rio Salado presentations through all these years, and one time at a Rotary Club I was -- the question [about] source of water always comes up, just like "what do you do about bugs?" and "what do you do about mosquitoes?" I was leaning kind of heavily on the sources of water, saying that one of the prime sources will be the recycled effluent of sewage treatment plants. So one of the Rotarians came up to me afterward and said, "Boy, this is a real community project. Everybody in town is putting something into it!" (laughter) A lot of amusing things, and a lot of unhappy things that developed. But it's all on the way up now.

. . .

SOLLIDAY: . . . if you could sum up what the idea was back in the late '60s, what you envisioned Rio Salado would be like, or the concept, the most basic concept.

ELMORE: Well, it very quickly became apparent to us that this was a really vast reservoir of open space that was unique to the heart of a great city, right at its center. And it was an ugly, awful thing, but there it was, and cities all around it. And it just seemed to be a marvelous opportunity for economic commercial development, as well as recreational. People tend to view Rio Salado as a recreational project, and indeed it is that, but it is also a wise way of continuing to build our city -- regionally, not just Tempe, but the other riverfront jurisdictions that are progressing at their own pace, but it's all going to happen. But early on, we saw what a remarkable opportunity this was. The term "in-fill" was not in much use at that time. It's talked about a lot now, (SOLLIDAY: We just didn't worry about it then.) . . . building in town, where the utilities are, where all the infrastructure exists -- instead of paying to follow it out into the desert. We've already used up most of the farmlands, but again, I think it's a wise way of building a city.

SOLLIDAY: So it sounds like what we're doing today with Rio Salado, it really hasn't changed very much from the original idea.

ELMORE: No. It's the same river, it's the same cities, it's the same future. This is a way of accommodating the growth that is inevitable and anticipated -- even though there are those who would like there to be NO growth. It's coming, and this is a good way to accommodate quite a bit of it. So does that tend to answer your questions?

SOLLIDAY: Yes, I think so. That gives me a pretty good idea. It's kind of surprising to me to hear that it hasn't changed in 30 years -- or at least the underlying idea of the reasons why, or what it will end up looking like after it's done -- it's just a little bit surprising that it's the same project that you'd started with, it sounds like.

ELMORE: (leaves microphone to look for something) I lost this, but just found it the other day. This was our final report in the College of Architecture. And this is the drawing from which this rendering was made -- which incidentally was made by the same delineator/artist who made the rendering that you saw at the groundbreaking -- Julian Clark, 30 years later, made that. . . . You know what I mean, that shows the whole. . . . Maybe you don't know.

SOLLIDAY: The City's current plans?

ELMORE: (goes to fetch something else) This one.

SOLLIDAY: Oh, yes, of the town lake.

ELMORE: Yeah. Well, that was Julian Clark that made that, and also made this. But I got this out because there are a couple of pictures here that. . . . These are slides in the library, in color, that show -- this was the first thing in '66. This was '69. And this too. And this. This is kind of fun. This is the students graphics that you see here. So it's changed a little bit. It isn't now a free-flowing lake like this -- it's a flood control channel with straight edges -- but it's still water, and it still offers the opportunity. So it's changed to THAT extent. See here they even had a little tributary off to the side. Here's the stadium.

SOLLIDAY: And the water went right back into the river then?

ELMORE: Yeah, uh-huh. But you see, it was a concept with us, and it has BEEN a concept over time. It is only now becoming real, but it is still a concept -- evolving, developing, but all on the basis of the idea that we can rehabilitate what is a liability and turn it to our advantage as we honor the river that is the reason we're here. All 2« million of us are here because of that river.

SOLLIDAY: Well, it makes such a difference, too. I remember in '78 and '80 when the floods came through. There was so much destruction, and yet it was exciting to go to the river and see something that looked beautiful, instead of this ugly scar across the middle of the Valley.

ELMORE: Well, I think that. . . . And I believe there is something that someone wrote one time about "the edge" -- making the point that the excitement, the interest, is at the edge: At the edge where the land meets the air, that's not too exciting. Where the sea meets the air is not -- well, it's exciting in its own way, but in a kind of limited way. . . . But it's where the land meets the water that is the edge. That is the reason that New York is there, Washington, every city you can point to -- some for different reasons, mostly commercial, functional operational reasons. And they've all honored their river and taken advantage of it. We haven't. But now we are.

SOLLIDAY: It's certainly going to be exciting to see the water going in there for the first time.

ELMORE: Yeah, I say in a couple of the interviews I gave that I now see. . . . At the time of the defeat of the election, I sort of began to wonder if I'd ever see a groundbreaking like that. But I saw it. And I think now, as I've said, that I'll have a boat ride, even while I can still paddle my own canoe. (chuckles) So I don't know if you want these things or not. They're. . . .

SOLLIDAY: Yeah, that would be a wonderful addition for the exhibit. We tend to focus a little bit on the recent things because there's so much of it, but that would be real nice to add in there. Yes. Okay, well, I think that answered the questions I had there. I just had a few. I came across a quote in there, too, "putting the water back into the Salt." Is that the way that you characterized that early on, when the project first started?

ELMORE: Well, actually, my directive was to do something with the river. But the students came up with the idea of putting water back in the river, and developed that to even suggest the ways of GETTING the water. So. . . . (pause) What was your question again? (both chuckle)

SOLLIDAY: Well, "putting the water back into the Salt," was that something that you had suggested?

ELMORE: That's what turned them on to see the real possibility. Without the water, it's just going to stay the way it is -- will continue to be a dump. The water is what MAKES it, because of that "edge theory" that I just propounded. The interest is where the edge of the water is. That's where the bike paths will be, and the hotels, and the boat landings.

SOLLIDAY: A lot of activity!

ELMORE: Yeah.

END OF INTERVIEW