City News

The Tucson Community Center Historic District downtown was listed in the National Register of Historic Places last week. The district consists of the landscape surrounding the TCC Arena, Music Hall and Leo Rich Theater; the walkway between the hotel and La Placita Village; and Veinte de Agosto Park. The Convention Center and arena are in the southern end of the district.

The district was designed in stages by Modernist landscape architect Garrett Eckbo (1910-2000) in 1971, 1973, and 1974.

The Tucson Fire Department (TFD) and Tucson Police Department (TPD) will hold a brief joint drill tomorrow, in which the Rescue Task Force (RTF) will simulate rescuing victims after an intentional mass casualty event, such as a mass shooting or bombings. The RTF is a set of teams made up of firefighters and police officers deployed to provide emergency medical care to victims where there is an ongoing ballistic or explosive threat.

The City of Tucson is working on a beautification project along Campbell Avenue between Grant and Fort Lowell roads. The project seeks to modernize the area and make it prettier and more friendly to pedestrians. The budget for the work is $670,000, which comes from a federal grant and the Regional Transportation Authority.

Living Streets Alliance is again partnering with the City of Tucson Bicycle & Pedestrian Program and the Pima Association of Governments to give away bike lights to people without them. Not only do bike lights improve visibility for both cyclists and others on the street – it's the law that bicyclists have them. The Light the Night event starts tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Tucson Botanical Gardens is the first and only venue in Arizona to host the award-winning, traveling “Nature Connects, A LEGO Brick Exhibit.” The four-month-long exhibit features 13 larger-than-life LEGO sculptures include a peacock, hummingbird, birdbath, monarch butterfly, and more. Tucson Botanical Gardens is located at 2150 North Alvernon Way.

Read more from Tucson News Now.

The Tucson Police Department (TPD) Crime Lab, DNA Unit will receive $1 million over two years to test up to 1,000 previously untested sexual assault kits. TPD has been selected as a recipient of the 2015 Sexual Assault Kit Backlog Elimination Grant Program to begin on Oct. 1. Sexual assault evidence kits, commonly known as “rape kits,” are collections of evidence taken during an examination conducted at a hospital or rape crisis center following a sexual assault.