So what does $77 million buy? We don’t know yet, for sure, but we are deeply skeptical about the most recent spate of reassurances from various Rio Nuevo nabobs. We’ve been disappointed too often over too many years.

In a Sunday story, the Star’s Rob O’Dell reviewed the project’s spending to date, and noted that many of the project’s records are “incomplete, unorganized and lacking in detail.”

It took repeated efforts for O’Dell to get the figures, but even so, some documents were illegible and incomplete. He reported that the use of “illogical categories” made tracking spending difficult.

Rio Nuevo director Greg Shelko told the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District Board on Wednesday that his staff is revising its accounting practices.

This is absolutely necessary. It must be utterly clear to taxpayers what money is being spent for what purpose.

We wish that from the beginning the Rio Nuevo nabobs had the insight to realize that the taxpaying public yearns to see results, and so had organized the project to deliver a few small but highly visible victories every year. Instead, they’ve largely focused on big, complex projects like museums and arenas that can’t be built quickly.

Thus a wary public naturally asks: When? Again, and again, and again.

City officials vow that the answer is soon, because much of the groundwork has been laid. Most of the $77 million has gone into land acquisition, marketing studies, pre-construction site preparation, landfill mitigation, streetscape planning, infrastructure upgrades that are largely underground, design and other critical preparatory work that is setting the stage for a construction boom in the next few years.

“Seventy-seven million dollars seems outrageous to some people,” says Jeff DiGregorio, a co-owner of the Royal Elizabeth Bed and Breakfast Inn Downtown and a member of the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District Board, which has the last word on where the money goes. “But all the preparatory steps that are critical are done. I don’t think the average citizen understands that you don’t just get money and start building, particularly with such large, complex, signature public projects.”

Gerald Dixon, whose Gadsden Co. is slated to build a 14,000-square-foot public market — the Mercado San Agustín — on the West Side on Congress Street across from the site for Rio Nuevo’s Tucson Origins Heritage Park, estimates the $77 million “has gotten Tucson $150 million in private investment.”

Rio Development, which is run by Dixon’s son and a partner, is building the Mercado District at Menlo Park, a mixed-use area including single-family homes, residential and commercial condos and retail spaces. The project is also on Congress Street.

“The five charter builders (in the Mercado District) have spent over $23 million of their own private capital in support of Rio Nuevo,” Dixon said. “We strongly believe in Rio Nuevo.

“I’ve been polling other developers, and I think the private sector has spent more than $77 million Downtown. Our own West Side projects are nearing $28 million in private investment,” he said.

Among the Downtown projects are refurbished apartments renting for between $625 and $895 at One North Fifth, the building that formerly housed the Martin Luther King public housing development. Another is 44 Broadway, a condo project in the former federal court annex at 44 E. Broadway.

Almost 18 percent of the $77 million spent so far has gone into salvaging and reinvigorating the Fox ($11.5 million) and Rialto ($2.3 million) theaters, which regularly draw large crowds to shows Downtown. But these are successes for which Rio Nuevo cannot take credit; it played a supporting role, but the work to save both theaters was spurred by private citizens.

In fact, an agenda item that seemed to suggest the Rio Nuevo board might okay repossession of the Fox by the city drew several news reporters and at least one worried citizen to the Wednesday meeting.

The item — to consider authorizing “the transfer and conveyance of the Fox Theatre to the City of Tucson … in consideration of the City’s assumption and defeasance of the outstanding bonded indebtedness relating to that property” — was withdrawn. Shelko said the wording was misleading: It referred only to refinancing the Fox debt.

During a two-plus hour meeting, the Rio Nuevo board — all new appointees — heard a series of optimistic promises. For instance, there’s the planned combined University of Arizona science and state museum. Robert Smith, UA assistant vice president for facilities design and construction, said, “We’re going to be ready to start construction next spring or early summer.”

The new Arizona History Museum has been designed, according to Deborah Shelton, director of the historical society’s Southern Arizona Division, and has a goal of completion in time to mark Arizona’s statehood centennial in February 2012.

A Cushing Street I-10 underpass will lead to a new bridge has been designed to span the Santa Cruz River, linking Downtown to the West Side Heritage Park project, with its myriad museums, and the nearby private projects by Rio and Gadsden, according to Shelko. A light-rail system under construction will terminate at the West Side projects.

The work so far has been done almost entirely on a pay-as-you-go basis, using revenues from Rio Nuevo’s tax-increment financing, or TIF. The next round of projects could be financed by borrowing.

Next Wednesday, the mayor and City Council will work through their options for financing, Jaret Barr, assistant to the city manager, told us.

“We will review the various options and we will come away from that meeting with a number: Right now you can do ‘X’ million dollars in bonds, based on the council’s choices.”

Council member Regina Romero, who represents Ward 1 on the West Side, told us, “I really think we need to start encumbering that TIF money. Let’s go, go, go.”

Once a bond budget was decided, the next steps would be to lay a construction schedule into the bond timetable, according to Shelko.

It’s vital that Rio Nuevo develop clear, transparent accounting practices. We still hold out hope for Downtown revitalization, but the thrill is gone.

They’ll have to show us real results to win back our trust.

Credit: AZStar.net