A barren and flat landscape, relieved only by a scattering of ancient trees, will become an urban showcase under Rio Nuevo plans for what will be known as the Mercado District.

Menlo Park Neighborhood representatives and city officials broke ground Nov. 9 for the the 14-acre project, which will serve as a residential and commercial core of downtown redevelopment.

Noting that the land where the group stood has been continuously inhabited for 2,500 years and had served as the original site of Tucson, Assistant City Manager Karen Thoreson said it was appropriate that "the birthplace of the city would be the birthplace of Rio Nuevo."

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Thoreson called on those attending the ceremony to "imagine 200 homes from CongressŠall nestled together in a beautiful Southwest design. In a very short period of time, those homes will be built and people will be living in them," she said.

Ward 1 City Council Member Jose Ibarra called the Mercado project "a catapult for revitalizing downtown. This is where it's going to start and flow from here into downtown. Now we can move forward with great momentum."

Rio Development Co., a consortium of builders, architects and environmental planning firms, is the project's designer and builder. Working in cooperation with the city and the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association, the consortium is presenting the Mercado District as a Spanish colonial theme community that combines residential and commercial use in a limited space, said Jerry Dixon, Rio Development's managing partner.

"The street pattern follows the course of (Hohokam-Piman) irrigation ditches, and we've worked hard to make this a place that's special," he said. "It's a walkable development, with homes, shopping, mixed-use and open space together."

While the plan for the Mercado District is unlike the traditional single-story and dispersed Tucson architecture, "It is an organic, natural ordering of space," said Dr. Suzanne Bott, project manager for the Sonoran Institute's Building the Best of Tucson, a proposal for transforming the city's traditional suburban land use pattern into one that has less impact on the desert environment and builds a greater sense of community.

In keeping with the Building the Best of Tucson plan, Bott said, "there are public streets, private streets and courtyards to encourage people to walk rather than drive." Mixed-use buildings, with residences over commercial space "follows a timeless pattern," she said.

Although emulating the traditional communities in Europe and Latin America can't be done "in its strictest form," Bott said, "there's a logical hierarchy of buildings in these communities based on their uses, from the largest public buildings to commercial and residential. It's a natural order that should weather the test of time beautifully."

With 80,000 square feet of retail space and 260 single- or multi-family dwellings on 14 acres, the project also is far more densely developed than the surrounding neighborhood of small single-family homes.

"Because of that, the developers have taken great care to provide a mixture of densities and a lot of amenities to avoid giving this the appearance of a high-density project," said Randy Emerson, the city's director of development for Rio Nuevo. "High density, if it's properly designed, can be a good thing."

While traffic will be routed away from the surrounding Menlo Park streets, the project will redefine a neighborhood where many families have lived for several generations. "Our lives are going to change profoundly here," said Lillian Lopez-Grant, president of the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association.

However, she said concern for the neighborhood has made the design process easier than it could have been and gives her confidence in the project. "We are fortunate to have people who are part of the development who have stayed with us to make this happen. We're also doing our part in the neighborhood, so we can welcome the new residents with open arms."

She said, "Today we turned the shovel on progress. We have to look for progress for our neighborhood and for the city of Tucson. We're going to have a new dream here in the best and first development of its kind in the city."

Philip S. Moore may be contacted at pmoore@azbiz.com or at (520) 295-4238.