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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
Inside This Week
Chandler braces for challenges in local economy BY KEN SAIN Arizonan Managing Editor
NEWS............................. 14 Chandler counted unsheltered people in the city.
COMMUNITY..............23 NFL brings Super Bowl excitement to Hamilton High.
T
he days of Chandler being a large manufacturing magnet are pretty much over. And the office space business is dead, killed by COVID with no clear picture if it’s ever coming back. Those were two of the takeaways from a city council work session on the state of economic development in Chandler and the Valley. Vice Mayor Matt Orlando asked the head of the city’s Economic Development Department staff during a Jan. 23 work session if they’re trying to bring any automobile
Chandler CEO’s new app addresses teens’ mental health. COMMUNITY.................................22 BUSINESS........................................ 26 SPORTS.............................................32 GET OUT......................................... 34 CLASSIFIEDS................................... 36
manufacturing plants to Chandler. “We’re not going to be competitive. We don’t have the building and land size to compete for those projects,” Micah Miranda told Orlando. “They need 80, 100 acres of land for their manufacturing facilities. We are out of it.” Both Casa Grande and Mesa have become homes to electric vehicle and truck manufacturing plants that employ thousands of people. Chandler has built out more than 93% of its available land, leaving only small plots scattered about the city. There is no large space like Intel’s campus for new large
companies. But there remains room for smaller companies. Miranda said the city still goes after larger ones, hoping they’ll bring their engineers to Chandler. “We really focus on the automotive tech engineering,” Miranda said. “So like you mentioned, GM Innovation Center, Maxim Integrated, all of the back-end engineering that goes into your product are the automotive tech companies we’re targeting.” There has been a huge drop in demand for commercial office space since the pandem-
see ECONOMY page 14
Chandler ups the ante to Honoring history fill police vacancies BY KEN SAIN Arizonan Managing Editor
BUSINESS..................... 26
February 5, 2023
FREE | chandlernews.com
D
espite offering thousands of dollars in bonuses, the Chandler Police Department is still not able to fill all its positions and so City Council appears likely to spend $381,000 to broaden its recruitment efforts. “The Police Department [has] been averaging about 30 police officer vacancies per month for the last 18 months,” Chief Sean Duggan told Council at the Jan. 23 study session. “The reality is that
we need to do more than we’re doing presently.” The item before Council was a one-year contract to ad agency Davidson Belluso for a digital marketing campaign to recruit new officers from outside Arizona. “There are roughly 1,000 police officer vacancies in the Valley,” Duggan said. “So, we are competing with every other agency in the Valley, and that pool of talented and qualified people that are still
see COUNCIL page 12
As Chandler Mayor Kevin Hartke looked on, Willie Arbuckle, one of the first black students to graduate from Chandler High School in 1951, spoke on Jan. 28 as the city added him and several other inductees to the Celebration Plaza monument wall. (David Minton/Arizonan Staff Photographer)
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