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AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS www.ahwatukee.com
TEPID ON FREEWAY
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
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True Life drops Farms, offers golf course
AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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he True Life Companies last week told a state Superior Court judge that the company will build a small golf course – if it is allowed to build homes on the 101-acre site of the defunct Ahwatukee Lakes Golf Course. And it also warned that if he orders the company to restore the old course, the land will remain barren indefinitely. The bombshell disclosures are contained in a brief filed by attorney Chris Baniszewski with state Superior Court Judge John R. Hannah Jr., who began on Tuesday, Oct. 24, hearing evidence in a three-day trial on two residents’ demand that True Life be ordered
to restore the course. Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the company’s Ahwatukee Farms plan, which would have turned the site into an “agrihood.” The brief gives no details on how many homes and what kind of course the company would build if Hannah grants its request to modify the covenants, conditions and restrictions that first governed the site in 1986 and then renewed indefinitely in 1992. All it states is: “The modification will allow additional homes to be built on the property that will generate the necessary funding to construct and operate a golf course.” Attorney Thomas Barnes, who represents Lakes residents seeking the restoration of the 18-hole executive golf course, states
in his brief that True Life wants to build a nine-hole “fun course.” Baniszewski also warns that if True Life can’t build homes, “no golf course will be operated on the property and it will remain in fallow condition.” True Life Executive Vice President Aiden Barry declined comment when asked about the brief by AFN last weekend. Barnes asserts that True Life knew what the CC&Rs required when it paid $9 million to buy the site in 2015. But he charges that True Life “was looking at the profitability of the sale of residences, not the operation of a golf course” when it bought the site and cannot now seek a mod-
AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS FOR LOCAL SENIORS
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AMAZING LIFE
See
LAKES on page 18
Water department Mad for science and scares will take on meter furor at town hall BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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NOTABLE WOMEN
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he official in charge of one of the nation’s largest potable water utilities may face an angry crowd of Ahwatukee customers Thursday at a town hall focusing on unexplained spikes in meter readings throughout the community. Kathryn Sorensen, director of the Water Services Department, may attend the meeting – at 6 p.m. Oct. 26 at Pecos Community Center, 17010 S. 48th St. – that city Councilman Sal DiCiccio arranged following weeks of complaints about Ahwatukee customers’ water bills. “We want the Water Services Department See
METERS on page 21
(Kimberly Carrillo/AFN Photographer)
Mountain Pointe High School sophomore Spencer Reed is bringing his mad scientist role to the student theater company’s annual presentation of a Halloween haunted house. It’s also one of two productions the young thespians have on the playbill over the next two weeks. For details, see page 44. Other Halloween stories: page 3 and page 40.