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Monday, October 12, 1998
Arizona town weighs ordinance to curb lounging on sidewalks
Associated Press
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Steve "Lizard" Tingen makes a living selling $5 hemp necklaces along Mill Avenue, a popular dining and club spot near Arizona State University, and supplements his income with occasional panhandling. He's milled Mill every other day since landing in Tempe 10 days ago from Flagstaff, and he's found lots of potential customers.
"It's the downtown strip where everybody is," said Tingen, 21. "In living on the streets, panhandling and selling hemp, it's like with shops: location is essential. The people that want to be able to eat and drink, they have to come downtown."
Tingen is exploiting the city's point of pride, the plenitude of pedestrians that roam Mill Avenue. Since a revitalization a few years ago, shoppers and bar-hoppers have swarmed the sidewalks among teen-agers, many homeless, who hang out and panhandle.
Now elected leaders are considering an ordinance that would forbid sitting and lying down on downtown public sidewalks during certain hours. Violators would be fined.
"We went from a handful of street people, I call them disconnected people, to a couple hundred," said Rod Keeling, executive director of the Downtown Tempe Community. "Ever since, we've been struggling to learn about how other cities deal with this problem."
A Tempe City Council subcommittee is researching the idea, proposed by the city's Police Department and the DTC, a business improvement district. The whole council will likely vote in the coming months on an ordinance patterned after one in Seattle.
Shop owner Gayle Shanks is fed up with complaints from customers who say teen-agers sitting outside intimidate them from entering her used bookstore, Changing Hands. Shanks is representative of most shop owners along Mill Avenue. She doesn't want to interfere with anybody's civil rights, but business is her main priority.
"The issue with the street people is really that they make people feel uncomfortable, and it doesn't make for any environment that encourages people to come downtown," she said.
Shanks, who opened her store in the 1970s, remembers when Mill Avenue was an unsavory strip cluttered with biker bars, boarded-up storefronts and small, independent shops.
So do others.
"There was a biker bar that was so bad, they drove their motorcycles right inside the bar. You'd smell that exhaust," said Councilman Dennis Cahill, a Tempe resident for most of his life. "It was terrible."
Now Cahill and others are proud of the upscale retail area. They want the street to remain an Arizona hot spot, a destination that is safe for pedestrians and protects everyone's rights.
Cahill says the proposal isn't aimed at a specific part of the pedestrian population but at specific behavior.
The Arizona Civil Liberties Union disagrees, saying sidewalk ordinances are designed to curtail the presence of people deemed undesirable.
"What we're concerned about is that this is a group of people that are being singled out not so much for their behavior but for their appearance," said Eleanor Eisenberg, ACLU executive director. "Somebody sitting passively on a sidewalk is not doing something illegal."
Not so in other cities. The first loitering ordinance of this kind originated in Seattle in 1994 after a lengthy court battle. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in 1996.
The Tucson City Council passed a similar city law last November to combat loitering and panhandling along Fourth Avenue. Several California towns also ban sidewalk sitting.
Tempe Police Lt. Mike Ringo argues that the youthful crowd won't be run out if the ordinance is enacted. They will simply move to the numerous benches and planters that align the avenue.
He says the ordinance will serve one simple purpose: to uphold the quality of life Tempe has fought for since revitalization began.
"We're a victim of our own success," Ringo says. "Tempe has been identified as the place to be."
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