Tucson Weekly: Infill This! (May 21

Here's One Big, Fat Example Of Why Tucson Is Such A Sprawl.
By Emil Franzi
JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY likes the idea of infill--building new homes and businesses in town, rather than on the outskirts, thereby preserving what's left of our unique desert environment. It makes sense--the infrastructure's already in place, reducing the cost of development.
But it's not always an easy concept to sell in the real world. Developers build all those tract homes out in the northwestern and far eastern areas of the valley because there's often more red tape and political hassles when it comes to building them in town (and, of course, outlying land is cheaper and more plentiful).
Take the case of 11 vacant acres near the corner of Speedway and Pantano Road. US Homes wanted to rezone this parcel to build 43 houses. The current zoning allows only 11, a density that's lower than what's often found outside Tucson city limits.
Currents The property is bordered on two sides by earlier tract-home developments, and on a third side by a high-rise apartment complex. On the fourth side of the proposed development lives the longtime landowner, Mrs. Thomas Robb, currently residing on the remaining 20 acres of the land where she's lived since 1942.
The law gives those who own adjacent parcels of land the right to protest a rezoning, at least if they're within 300 feet of the proposed construction site. (Mrs. Robb did so in the past--and lost, hence all those other tract homes. Now she's working to sell off the neighborhood's next-to-last vacant piece.)
The law's protest provision obviously has little application to large tracts in the boonies, where very few people are living. In those cases, if someone does protest, often the developer can just shave 300 feet off the edge of his massive rezoning request to avoid the hassle. Wildlife and plants have no voice.
That 300-foot rule--in the case of the city, it's only 150 feet--apparently empowers those who bought their tract homes years before to block others from moving into similar developments. If 20 percent of the nearby residents protest, the project is officially blocked. That is, unless the developer can get a "super-majority" vote of the governing body with jurisdiction over the parcel in question. In this case, US Homes would have to convince six of the seven voting members of the Tucson City Council that the rezoning is a good idea.
And two of those councilmembers, José Ibarra and Jerry Anderson, are willing to go along with those in the protest zone and vote against the rezoning. Anderson maintains US Homes can do better than the "cookie-cutter" plan it's submitted, and suggests the parcel's wash, cactus and wildlife can be at least partially spared.
THE PROBLEM IS further complicated by the city's plans to punch Kent Road through to the current driveway of the neighborhood's high-rise apartments. City bureaucrats have already acquired the right of way.
This clearly and adversely impacts the entire neighborhood. While gathering a large number of petition signatures protesting the rezoning, Carriage Hills Neighborhood Association volunteers frequently pointed out what a bad idea it would be to extend Kent Road.
However, other neighbors believe building the 43 houses is a great idea, because the development would be configured in such a way as to block the city from extending the road.
According to Tim Gillooly, a resident outside the 150-foot empowerment zone, the neighborhood would be better off if the subdivision were built and the road project killed. Gillooly and others say somebody is bound to build on the vacant parcel sooner or later, regardless whether the road goes through. Even if the developer were to build 11 houses under the current zoning instead of the proposed 43, there's no guarantee the road wouldn't come with the lower density.
The Carriage Hills leaders don't see it that way. The association wants the city to buy the 11 acres and make it a quail preserve. Councilman Anderson, elected as the archetypal neighborhood champion, supports them.
But in doing so, he must ignore the concerns of Gillooly and others down the road who believe the Carriage Hills group is being unrealistic for the following reasons:
The disputed parcel doesn't even come close to meeting the city's criteria for new parks, Gillooly notes. And he claims that outfits like the Nature Conservancy, which buy land to save it from development, have much higher priorities than relatively small, in-town parcels. And Gillooly doubts Anderson's pledge that the City Council will be able to kill the road extension. Gillooly and those farther away prefer the sure thing of the 43 homes killing the road to Anderson's facile promises.
As it turns out, US Homes officials could count. They realized they'd be getting only five votes from the Council when they needed six. They withdrew their zoning request.
But if those neighbors bordering the property believe they've won the war, they're probably wrong. The odds of those 11 acres becoming a park or remaining as is are slim to none.
Councilman Steve Leal, a major advocate of infill projects, is frustrated. He believes that despite the neighbors' protests, this project meets all reasonable criteria. Sure it's nice to have a big empty lot behind your house, he argues, but eventually whoever owns it gets to do something with it. "Cookie-cutter" subdivisions are what's already there, and the developer is hardly destroying the area by building homes of equal density and slightly greater value.
THE REAL PROBLEM in this case centers on who's been legally empowered to stop or slow down growth.
Folks within 150 feet have more power than those who can be equally affected by the decisions on its use even though they may live a bit farther away. No one disputes that extending Kent Road will have a big impact on the entire area, but only those close by--in this case, precisely three homeowners--can sign protest petitions and hike from four to six the Council majority needed to pass a rezoning.
Meanwhile, farther out in the county, developers can always depend, as they have in the past, on the fact that they need only a simple three out of five supervisors to vote their way, regardless of the impact a project may have on those who live in the area--or for that matter, the impact on all of
us.

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