Saturday, October 16, 2004

City within a city: South Tucson

South Tucson working on cleaning up its drugs and prostitution image

LUKE TURF

Tucson Citizen

SOUTH TUCSON - Up and down the streets of this city within a city, you can see signs of the struggle.

New houses are going up where empty lots and rundown buildings once stood. Fresh mosaic signs with Southwestern flare welcome patrons in and out of South Tucson on street corners once staked out by drug dealers and prostitutes.

Big businesses such as Food City, Walgreens and McDonald's mix with the smaller storefronts that have served often-struggling neighborhoods.

Many don't even know South Tucson is a city of its own. The square-mile municipality has fought to overcome almost four decades of decay in the past six years and though the "Pueblo within a City" has come a long way, some neighbors and business owners say more needs to be done.

The city's battle to avoid annexation by Tucson began in 1936 when a group of landowners sparked the first incorporation. For nearly 40 years the annexation and incorporation war was waged on and off the ballot, in and out of the state Supreme Court until the final resolution in 1975, in the midst of the onset of hard times.

Its twin backbones are funky South Fourth Avenue, home to the dog track and a restaurant row of all-star Sonoran cuisine, and South Sixth Avenue, the place to cruise and shop.

"It was a high-crime area," said South Tucson Police Chief Sixto Molina. "Back in the '70s it was a pretty wild place.

"South Tucson was known as a place where you would come and buy drugs in an open-air market and pick up a prostitute."

Molina, 53, began a law enforcement career here as a dispatcher in 1970.

South Tucson was home to southern Arizona's largest street gang, which he declined to name for this report.

He sits in his office under a 1999 photo of himself and former President Clinton.

"That's one of the highlights and defining moments of South Tucson. Because of that you can't get into Mi Nidito anymore, you have to take a number," Molina said.

Clinton's visit came at the peak of the Weed and Seed program, which brought the city $1 million in federal dollars over five years to fight crime and improve its image and standard of living.

The program "brought the neighborhoods together," said City Manager Fernando Castro. "Crime is down, the community is very attractive, there's no graffiti, it's doing very well."

Fifty new houses have replaced 20 dilapidated ones demolished in the past two years and the city has spent millions on new sidewalks, pavement and lighting, Castro said.

Crime is down, according to police records. The city averaged more than two murders per year from 1996 through 2002; in 2003 there were none. Robberies were down from an annual average of 49 to 28 in 2003, statistics show.

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