All,

Our final chance to do something about Vestar's commercial rezoning request at Black Mountain blvd and the high school is tomorrow December 4th at 2:30pm during the city council meeting.

The link to the meeting details and registration to speak : CLICK HERE (scroll down to the "Formal Meeting" and then click appropriate icon.

Documentation and online comments can be viewed : CLICK HERE

As the opposing group, we can't express enough how thankful we are for your support. However, it seems that corporate greed and politics triumphs over common sense and proper city planning.

Since the inception of the proposal, new construction on 380 apartments (882 in total) has started on Deer Valley near the Albertsons negating Vestar's reason to reduce traffic around Desert marketplace. In a recent article in Arizona republic, news about 100 acres development in City North highlighted the addition of a grocery store and another 3000 apartments have come to light, which I'm sure a developer like Vestar would have known about all along. 

With the enormous growth of Desert Ridge, we don't need a 15 acres fast food bonanza next to a high school, but a proper plan to address the needs to Desert Ridge that will stand the test of time and adheres to the Master Plan guidelines and deals with traffic and safety for our community. Planning committees should have a more pro-active role in pushing proposals into the already approved commercial sites.

Big mistakes have been made over the last decade by these various "planning" committees, which might be the main reason that this project has been forced onto our community and if this gets approved, a big opportunity is lost to do something positive for the high school and the safety and health of our children.

1) The bridge over Black mountain blvd is way too far away from the school for kids to use to cross the road. Whoever approved that location just wasted a lot of your tax money.

2) The original intent of the desert ridge master plan was to have a few 3 acres neighborhood commercial sites spread across desert ridge. Why none of the master plan community developers have had to adhere to this requirement is another oversight.

3) A residential builder has already launched a proposal for the remainder of this parcel back in August 2023, so why was that never considered a factor to deny the rezoning so that it could be all allocated to this builder and stay residential.

4) A library and community center is also being planned for in Desert Ridge (GoBond2023 page 5). Wouldn't that make more sense to be around our schools?

We could go on and on and none of it makes much sense.

This proposal would affect this area for a very long time.

Thanks again for your support.