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THE SUNDAY
7 unique spots in EV for cold dessert
Tribune
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Chandler/Tempe Edition
INSIDE
This Week
This Gilbert dentist’s patients bark and roar at him
FAITH .......................... 17 Christian tattooer fights stereotypes, criticism from both directions
PAGE 12
Sunday, JULY 9, 2017
Superstition Vistas:
An EV vision on hold looks for new life BY GARY NELSON Tribune Contributor
BUSINESS . ................ 13
EAST VALLEY
Downtown Mesa’s Artspace Lofts moving along
A
decade or so ago, you could hardly pick up a newspaper in the Valley without seeing a story about a place called Superstition Vistas. The stories fairly oozed with hyperbole about prospects for developing 275 square miles of state-owned land stretching from Apache Junction to the northern border of Florence. The tract is roughly the size of Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert and Chandler combined, room for a million or more people over the coming few decades. But it was more than just a grab-a-
buck developer’s dream. Some of the most thoughtful minds in the East Valley and Pinal County were looking at how to prevent the vast expanse of desert from becoming a patchwork of scattered, energy-sucking neighborhoods with inadequate water, infrastructure and economic underpinnings. The booming Valley and its outlying regions had seen enough of that already. It was in the middle of that boom, as the white-hot real estate market blazed its way toward meltdown, that talk of developing the Vistas began in earnest. “Seldom in the history of the U.S. has there been a chance to envision the future of one piece of property this large, this strategic and
this close to a major metropolitan region,” a 2006 report said. It seemed then that construction in the Vistas could begin at any moment. But history, in the form of the Great Recession, hit the pause button. Intensive – and expensive – studies of the Vistas did continue as the recession decimated the region’s economy. Those efforts climaxed in late 2011 when Pinal County adopted specific policies for the Vistas as part of its comprehensive plan. After that, the headlines stopped. The Arizona State Land Department, which See
VISTAS on page 5
Appearing doomed at birth, Mesa teen now looks to the future BY JESSICA SURIANO Tribune Staff Writer
SPORTS ...................... 15 Teen driven to succeed with Mesa water polo club
THINGS TO DO ... 20 A full day of fun: GolflandSunsplash crams two parks in one
BUSINESS.....................13 OPINION.................... 14 SPORTS......................... 15 FAITH............................. 17 CLASSIFIEDS............. 23
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ext fall, Tiffany Dymond Williams of Mesa will be starting her senior year of high school at the Learning Foundation and Performing Arts Charter School – 17 years after doctors deemed her too tiny to survive. On March 2, 2000, Tiffany was born at 1 pound, 10 ounces. Only an incubator, feeding tubes and “a whole lot of prayer” kept her alive at St. Joseph’s hospital in Phoenix, according to her grandmother and primary caregiver, Lillian Williams. Tiffany was born about 10 weeks early because her mother suffered from preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication caused by high blood pressure. She was so small that she was featured in the Tribune while in a neonatal intensive care unit, where doctors told relatives she probably wouldn’t make it through her first 24 hours of life. Hospitalized for about four months, she was See
TIFFANY on page 4
(Kimberly Carrillo/Tribune Staff Photographer)
Born weighing less than two pounds, Tiffany Dymond Williams of Mesa, left, was not expected to last a day, but doctors and her grandmother, Lillian Williams, got her out of danger. Soon, she'll begin her senior year in high school.