The Downtown campus teamed up with the city of Phoenix, Downtown Phoenix Partnership and Artlink, Inc., to host the third-annual trolley tour of downtown Friday.
The trolley tour, called a Taste of Downtown, was held to inform campus leaders of what the downtown area has to offer. It consisted of community assistants from the Taylor Place residential hall, student government members and other Downtown student leaders, ASU spokesman Steven Harper said.
Both Downtown Phoenix Partnership and Artlink, Inc., are nonprofit organizations located in Phoenix that work to promote the city to residents and visitors.
The tour is among one of the many activities that the Downtown Phoenix Partnership does throughout the year with ASU in order to stay connected with the University.
The partnership encourages students to attend First and Third Fridays — monthly Phoenix art walks — and helps coordinate homecoming activities, Harper said.
“We interact with ASU very closely all the time,” said David Rodique, president and CEO of Downtown Phoenix Partnership. “Obviously, they are one of the larger constituents down here, and so we do a tremendous amount with them.”
Roderique said he believes the addition of ASU to downtown has been one of the largest factors in the city’s recent growth and development.
This is one of the main reasons his organization plans so many activities with ASU.
“ASU has certainly been one of the key factors in the resurgence of downtown Phoenix,” Roderique said. “We’re seeing a lot more people, a lot more activity. There’s been $4 billion of new investments that have gone into downtown. There are new office buildings, new retail [and] new hotels, but ASU has certainly been one of the most significant factors there to cause this to happen.”
The trolley tour took the student leaders from Taylor Place on the Downtown campus to a variety of locations in downtown, including Chase Field, the Arizona Science Center and various restaurants around the city.
Nursing sophomore Jenny Gladstone was one community assistant who attended the tour.
“It was important for us as [community assistants] to know what is in downtown Phoenix to be able to tell our [residents] about the things they can do here,” Gladstone said. “It was just to get us better acquainted to the city.”
The Taylor Place community assistants recently finished a two-week training program, and the trolley tour served as a finale for the group, Gladstone said.
Reach the reporter at cottens@asu.edu
