Posted Jul 28, 2022, 3:23 PM
|
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 6,613
|
|
|
Last Major Parcel in Ahwatukee Being developed
I know most dont care but just learned that they finally have a plan for the final parcel of significant size in the Ahwatukee area.
https://www.ahwatukee.com/news/artic...0a9701913.html
The Location: https://goo.gl/maps/8azhnsDsXdCTjuBy7
Quote:
The plan for developing the 373 acres of former State Trust Land in Ahwatukee was unveiled last week, with the developer expecting work to begin late this year or in early 2023 building 1,050 one- and two-story houses, 150 build-to-rent townhomes and 329 apartments and starting home sales in 2024.
The Ahwatukee Foothills Village Planning Committee got a preview during its monthly meeting April 25 of Blandford Homes’ plans for the vast piece of desert next to Club West along Chandler Boulevard between 19th and 27th avenues that will be renamed Canyon Reserve.
Then, on May 23, the committee will be asked to give a formal recommendation to the Phoenix Planning Commission on a General Plan amendment for the development. The commission on June 2 will make a recommendation for a City Council hearing July 1 on that amendment. That would be Council’s last meeting before its summer break.
The land, which Blandford bought at a state Land Department auction last June for $175.5 million – far above the appraised value of $105 million – is already zoned for homes, apartments and some commercial development. The amendment will affect street classifications for the development, which also will include 29.21 acres of wash corridor.
While a good deal of the presentation focused on that amendment, some committee members also focused on so far nonexistent plans to address public safety services for a development that will bring thousands of people and vehicles to the area.
The General Plan amendment includes expanding Chandler Boulevard to five
lanes along that stretch that borders Canyon Reserve.
And as it has been since March 2020, the Village Planning Committee’s consideration of the plan on May 23 will be online only, with a WebEx link released by the Phoenix Planning Department about 10 days ahead of the meeting.
Alan Beaudoin of Norris Design, the zoning consultant for the project, spent a good part of his presentation to the committee on the purpose of the General Plan amendment, explaining, “Chandler Boulevard is not a completed street – it’s only partially developed as it sits out there today.”
“We are asking for an amendment to the current street-classification map that calls for a five-lane road for Chandler Boulevard adjacent to the front edge of the subject property – two lanes in each direction and the center turn lane,” he said. The width of Chandler Boulevard would be shortened, therefore, from 100 feet to 60 feet.
The original street classification anticipated Chandler Boulevard would connect to the South Mountain Freeway – something that did not occur.
So the current city street classification calls for Chandler Boulevard to be much wider than it needs to be with the freeway interchange having been moved to 17th Avenue, Beaudoin explained.
“There’s not a need to have such a large roadway adjacent to the property and the street class amendment would propose to modify the cross section of the roadways to reduce the roadway and work toward probably a more multimodal approach to the use of that piece of roadway,” he said.
That “multimodal approach” involves the city’s request for bike lanes on both sides of Chandler Boulevard.
Beaudoin said the city Department of Streets Transportation “is requesting enhanced consideration for bicycle facilities and so we’re working in our amendment process and inner-master plans to do some unique configurations of the bike lanes.”
In addition, the development plan calls for extending Liberty Lane to Chandler Boulevard, but only as a local street because the freeway interchange is now at 17th Avenue.
Liberty Lane “was anticipated to be a much larger road connecting up with a freeway interchange and, of course, that did not happen, Beaudoin said. “So we are asking that that road be not classified and that we’re allowed to construct it as just a local street to provide some connectivity to the neighborhoods that we’re developing as well as the neighborhoods to the immediate west.”
Because Beaudoin’s presentation followed a lengthy presentation by the city of its plans to expand the network of electric vehicle charging stations and develop a way for low-income residents to access the expensive vehicles, the committee was interested in Blandford Homes’ plans for charging stations.
The city plan calls for modifying planning regulations and working with utility companies to make it easier – and possibly mandatory – for new-builds to include EV-charging capability.
Beaudoin noted that Blandford Homes as a company offers charging stations as an option to homebuyers, depending on the plan they choose.
But he said while there is an “increasing number of homebuyers in the builder’s other communities that are choosing a plan with an EV charging station, “it is still not an option often selected.”
“We see it in the future as something that the market is going to continue to be interested in and having available as a choice for them,” he added.
That led to a question about whether any of the approximate 11 acres of the development now zoned commercial would allow for a gas station. But Beaudoin said he had no idea whether a gas station would eventually end up in that area.
The bigger concern was raised by committee member Darin Fisher of Vision Community Management, which manages three of the HOAs closest to Canyon Reserve.
Fisher focused on whether Phoenix fire and police departments had plans to build substations there.
“Our single greatest concern we have down is the lack of public safety,” Fisher said. The Phoenix Fire Department, the ambulance services and Police Department cannot meet their stated delivery times for service to Foothills Reserve, Calabria. Promontory.
He added those services “are continually missing” target delivery times in Club West and other nearby HOAs as well.
“There has long been a debate down in our end of Ahwatukee about putting a fire substation or police substation down there,” Fisher said, noting Canyon Reserve will bring at least 5,000 new residents and as many as 3,200 motor vehicles that will be “massively impacting the density in that particular end of Ahwatukee.”
“That has not come up in conversation yet,” Beaudoin replied. “But we haven’t started the extensive process with the City of Phoenix Planning and Development Department yet either. …This is the first that we hear of a public response challenge in the western portion of the Ahwatukee Foothills.
“We certainly will be having conversations with the Fire Department, for sure. And can certainly bring up conversations with the Police Department as well as it relates to those services,” he continued.
City records show that while there had been a plan for a fire station in the Phoenix’s long-range capital improvement program, that project is no longer on the books. City officials did not have an explanation and records do not reflect a reason why it was dropped.
Fisher said, “there were old maps of this state land and potential development that showed the possibility of “substations being added to the capital improvement program “but nothing’s ever been formal.”
But he added, “It’s just one of the things that I know is going to be a touchstone topic of conversation going forward for a lot of the homeowners in the area.”
Beaudoin also was asked whether Blandford will be completing a sound wall along the northern edge of the South Mountain Freeway, where there is about a 3,400-foot gap.
“We’ve had good conversations with ADOT about us constructing a wall,” he replied.
“We’re obviously interested in noise mitigation for future residents …and that’s been the nature of the conversation so far. And what we’re hoping to do is move toward an agreement.”
|
|
Prev
Linear Mode
