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THE SUNDAY
Tribune
PAGE 3 West Mesa Edition
INSIDE
This Week
NEWS ............................. 6 Mesa weighs raising utility rates, among Valley’s highest
COMMUNITY ......... 11 Making wine at home uncorks custom blends
BUSINESS................... 14 Chandler store offers unusual bling for loved ones
MUSIC......................... 24 Rob Zombie guitarist John 5 feels the heat
COMMUNITY..................11 BUSINESS........................14 OPINION.........................19 SPORTS...........................20 FAITH............................... 22 CLASSIFIED....................28
EAST VALLEY
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It’s here! The 2018 Best of Mesa INSIDE Sunday, March 25, 2018
Uber death spotlights self-driving vehicle concerns BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Tribune Staff Writer
T
he nation’s first death associated with the self-driving car program that has called the East Valley home has reignited the debate over the safety of driverless vehicles and raised new questions over liability and fault. A self-driving Volvo XC90 – one in Uber’s fleet of silver SUVs that have become a common sight around Tempe – hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg around 10 p.m. March 18 at Curry Road and Mill Avenue as she crossed the road outside a crosswalk, police said. Based on the findings of pending investiga-
Accident gives Mesa lawmaker pause over automated deliveries ….......................... Page 9 Leibowitz: Tragic video of Uber death just another thing to watch …........................ Page 19
tions, negligence claims involving the accident could include arguments that Uber, the operator behind the wheel, and/or the companies behind the technology that powers the autonomous vehicles were liable, experts said. “We haven’t had to deal with this yet because the autonomous vehicles haven’t been hurting anyone,” said attorney Mark Breyer, who handles liability cases throughout the region. Beyond the question of fault, the crash also reignited a national debate over the safety of
autonomous vehicles. In the wake of the crash, Uber suspended its use of self-driving cars in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. Toyota told Bloomberg News it would “temporarily pause” testing its driverless vehicles on public roads “because we feel the incident may have an emotional effect on our test drivers.” Uber issued a statement shortly after the accident that said: “Our hearts go out to the victim’s family. We are fully cooperating with authorities in their investigations of this incident.” Waymo, the Google-affiliated autonomous See
UBER on page 8
Price Corridor keeping Chandler on high-tech highway BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Tribune Staff Writer
B
etween 1976 and 1987, the focus of Chandler’s economy evolved from cotton to the electronics manufacturing industry that employed 70 percent of the city’s workforce. That shift toward tech has only intensified in the ensuing 30 years as Chandler’s economy has become increasingly reliant on microchips. And no area better exemplifies the city’s economic evolution than the Price Corridor, the stretch of land that is home to technology companies like Intel, Orbital ATK and PayPal. Despite the presence of those heavy hitters, much of the land in the corridor still betrays the city’s agricultural past. Acres upon acres of fading former cotton fields run up against new corporate campuses. That landscape is rapidly changing, though. And if market projections play out, those open fields will become much less common over the next several years as demand for more class-A office and industrial space reaches fever pitch in Chandler. The vacancy rate for industrial space in Chandler is 5 percent, and the vacancy rate for office space is a similarly low 9.9 percent,
(Tom Sanfilippo/Inside Out Aerial)
The mammoth Park Place complex in Chandler is adjacent to acres of farmland, once home to cotton fields and likely to become home to residential and retail development in the future.
according to the latest CoStar statistics provided by the city. Those are some of the lowest numbers in the Valley, indicating that the city is becoming a preeminent destination for businesses. Much of that can be attributed to an environment in the East Valley that is attractive to employees due to the concentration of quality schools, housing and lifestyle amenities. “The Chandler-Gilbert-Mesa-Tempe submarket is a highly desirable place for employ-
ees to live,” said Mark Stapp, Fred E. Taylor Professor of Real Estate at W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. “Employers want to locate in places where employees want to live.” Growth in the area is buoyed both by interest from new companies moving to Chandler and expansion by existing businesses. That growth is “underpinned by the fact See
PRICE on page 4