INSIDE:
C O M M U N I T Y P. 2 1 | B U S I N E S S P. 2 7 | O P I N I O N P. 3 0 | S P O R T S P. 3 2 | G E T O U T P. 3 6 | C L A S S I F I E D P. 3 8
www.ahwatukee.com
INSIDE
Wednesday February 24, 2021
. 21
P
SCISSORS ON WHEELS
M
att Shearer believes he and his three fellow owners of the Club West Golf Course have gotten a bad rap. And with the results of the Foothills Club West Association board of directors’ election due March 4, his biggest hope is that The Edge partners will get a chance to present the community the array of plans he said they’ve developed for the dead course. “We just want the homeowners to see and evaluate all the options and solutions and we feel like there’s a group that is using various, possibly questionable, methods to make the situation where the community can only hear and evaluate what is most favorable to this small group,” Shearer said in a wide-ranging interview with AFN last week. He said the investors have been subjected to
attacks in some segments of the community “that’s painted us in a bad light.” The Edge has not been before the community since January 2020, when it presented at an HOA meeting and subsequent open house its plan to restore the 18-hole, 160-acre course, financing it by selling three segments to a homebuilder for development. Shearer said he and his colleagues came up with that plan for the course after they saw “a tremendous apathy in the community” and “no one was doing anything.” “We worked with a lot of people,” Shearer said. “I’ve heard people say ‘we were blindsided’ and I’m like, ‘no we spent months working with the Save Club West business plan and their authors trying to figure out what had to be done.’ “And at the end of the day, everyone’s opinion said, ‘try to restore the golf course, you have to make it more sustainable as far as
A little jab will do ya
. 27 KING RETURNS
. 32
water goes’ and that led us to adapt the basic Save Club West plan.” Save Club West emerged soon after then-owner Wilson Gee in the summer of 2016 said he could no longer afford city potable water costs exceeding $750,000 and cut off irrigation. With the help of several golf course and other experts, Club West resident Jim Lindstrom came up with a detailed business and architectural plan to restore the course. But to finance the estimated $4 million needed to buy and restore the course, Lindstrom said that interested homeowners would have to step up. Borrowing an idea utilized by residents to save the Sunland Springs Golf Course in Mesa, Lindstrom said the contribution would range from $13,333 per homeowner if only 300 par-
see WEST page 4
Ahwatukee woman working on new kind of shelters BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
P
P
@AhwatukeeFN
The Edge: Let Club West see our course plans BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
NEW LOCAL AUTHORS
@AhwatukeeFN |
Pharmacist Erin Suchsland administered a COVID vaccine dose to teacher Jamie Smith last Friday during an inoculation blitz Tempe Union hosted at Corona del Sol High School as district officials prepare to reopen classrooms. See the story on page 3. (Pablo Robes/AFN Staff Photographer)
S
hante Soulsberry’s vision was forged in a childhood no kid should endure. The Ahwatukee woman recalls walking the streets of San Diego as a child with her sister with nowhere to go because her mother couldn’t find shelter. Soulsberry said some days they walked until their feet were raw, without food or even a bathroom. The two girls ultimately were taken from their mother by the state, which put them in a series of foster homes, “subjected to violence and sexual assault from a young age.” Flash forward to the present, where the family law legal assistant and author of an autobiography titled, “Dysfunctional Blessing” works with her wife Sheri, a
see SHELTER page 6