For decades, Mill Avenue in Tempe has served as a go-to spot for Arizona State University students to eat and shop, or for Sun Devil fans to party on game day.
But for better or worse, the street is changing. Mill has lost many beloved staple businesses over the years, and some say it’s just not the same place that they grew to love.
There are entire Reddit threads online dedicated to the changes Mill Avenue has seen over the years. Some reminisce about past holidays when the street was closed off for thousands of people to celebrate. Others say these days, it has more of an abandoned mall vibe.
Gabriel Sanchez is an ASU graduate.
“I think every time we’ve been out on Mill in the last like couple of years, really post-pandemic, it’s been really different,” Sanchez said. “Soon after graduation in 2012, I feel like Mill was always popping. There was always something going on and I feel like it just died down.”
Like many others, Sanchez has also noticed a never-ending rotation of businesses.
Sean Fleming is a local photographer and frequent visitor of Mill. He used to go there to take photos and enjoy the nightlife, but noticed some major differences when he returned recently.
“I was really surprised to see that the Irish pub (Rula Bula) was gone, the Restaurant Mexico was gone - that’s now a Taco Bell,” Fleming said. “The Hippie Gypsy now being a C.A.S.A. lounge, The Graffiti Shop is gone.”
Rula Bula and Restaurant Mexico had been around for more than 20 years before closing down. These days, Mill is full of empty store fronts that were home to places like Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and Illegal Pete’s.
“It seems like all of the affordable places and a lot of the family-owned businesses have just been perishing for more expensive, franchised chain stuff,” Fleming said.
Fleming’s not wrong. Mike DiDomenico is the economic development director for Tempe. He said 20 years ago, most of the property owners in that area were local families who were interested in maintaining a unique blend of local tenants.
“But over the years, a lot of those landlords sold their buildings,” DiDomenico said. “They get to the point in their lives where it’s time to retire and not be a landlord anymore or maybe they pass and the family sells them.”
That’s led to larger, out-of-state companies owning much of the real estate in downtown Tempe. DiDomenico said the city does what it can to influence those new landlords.
“We’d like them to not be looking for something that you can find in every other city in the Southwest,” DiDomenico said. “If you can find the restaurant at Terminal 4 at Sky Harbor, that’s probably not what we’re looking for in Tempe.”
But not every company is open to persuasion.
Troy Scoma has worked on Mill since the ‘80s and owns Cactus Sports, which has been there since 1992. He said there’s another key reason businesses can’t stay put.
“There are a lot of landlords down there charging an insane amount of money for rent per square foot,” Scoma said.
Scoma has seen an overall decrease in foot traffic, and he said a lot of his neighbors struggle to keep their doors open. People have even put groups together in the past to try and talk those landlords down to more reasonable prices.
“The problem is that when tenants do go out of business and they can’t afford to stay, these landlords are not having any issues finding a tenant to take that space,” Scoma said.
That means businesses without deep enough pockets don’t have time to get established.
“It takes a long time to get some roots and be able to maintain your business,” Scoma said.
DiDomenico said those bigger, out-of-state companies charge aggressive rates and there’s only so much the city can do to influence prices because Arizona doesn’t have rent control.
“We will give them leads, we’ll introduce them to tenants that their brokers aren’t bringing them, and we will also tell them about deals that are being made at other buildings that are lower than the rates they’re asking for,” DiDomenico said. “So we’ll try and adjust their expectations.”
But the city can’t put a cap on how much those landlords charge and overall, he said Mill Avenue is “growing up.”
“Mill Avenue in its life cycle is not the Mill Avenue of the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000’s,” DiDomenico said. “[There are] less night clubs and college bars. We have added so much residential.”
With more than just college students living in downtown Tempe, DiDomenico said Mill Avenue naturally needs to offer restaurant and retail options for Tempe’s changing demographic.
While some are excited about the newer concepts coming to Mill, people like Sanchez are disappointed to see what they view as the loss of its more casual atmosphere.
“Maybe with the high rise hotels, you get a higher end dining or bar experience,” Sanchez said. “I get that maybe that’s necessary for tourists or people from out of town who are staying at these hotels, but you’re next to a college campus.”
Scoma, on the other hand, is less concerned about $20 cocktails and more worried that if landlords continue to endlessly rotate through tenants, the empty spaces will only continue to deter foot traffic.
“I just think a lot of closed doors aren’t helping. And after years and years of this continuing to happen, I can see that it just doesn’t seem like that attractive of an option,” Scoma said. “It’s definitely not going to be an easy problem to fix.”
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