Kyl plans to stick around PAGE 4
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
NEWS................................10 Requiem for a fallen East Valley warrior.
BUSINESS....................... 19 San Tan Village store pushin' papa's platters.
FREE ($1 OUTSIDE OF GILBERT) | GilbertSunNews.com
Juco football may be saved PAGE 24
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Town eyes revival for northwest Gilbert BY CECILIA CHAN GSN Managing Editor
G
ilbert is looking to breathe new life into its oldest and densest employment center that is home to business heavyweights such as GoDaddy, Northrop Grumman and Mapfre Insurance. Town staff wants to designate that northwest corner of the town as a redevelopment area in order to reverse its decline and make it viable well into the future. “This corridor is the corridor with the most jobs in all of Gilbert, just shy of 15,000 employees,” said Dan Henderson, economic development director. “In order to be competitive, we need to develop some type of long-range planning, create a policy to create demand and help businesses that want to develop in this area,” he said.
Town Council at its October retreat gave the go-ahead to pursue the designation, which would allow for more flexibility such as with zoning and building codes. It would also open the area up for tax breaks and funding from sources, such as the Community Development Block Grant program. The hope is that a concentrated vision and focus for the area would encourage the private market to invest and ensure stability in an area no longer at its peak, according to Redevelopment Coordinator Amanda Elliott. This in turn would bring an increase in property values and improve the quality of life for those who live and work there. If Gilbert moves forward with the designation, it would see competition from Mesa and Chandler – which both have redevelopment corridors adjacent to this area, according to Henderson. Under Arizona law, in order to qualify for
the designation one or more of nine blight factors must be met – dominance of defective or inadequate street layout, faulty lot layouts, unsanitary or unsafe conditions, site deterioration, diversity of ownership, obsolete subdivision platting, conditions that endanger life or property, tax or special assessment delinquency that exceeds the fair value of land and defective or unusual conditions of title. Gilbert’s Northwest Employment Corridor, which is primarily comprised of science, technology, aerospace and manufacturing industries, has $29 million in private investment and $81 million in public investment, according to staff. Gilbert has three other employment centers – Banner Employment Corridor, Gate-
see CORRIDOR page 5
Gilbert food bank helps save Paradise a truck at a time BY JASON STONE GSN Staff Writer
GETOUT........................ 30 Quick hits for Turkey Day weekend.
COMMUNITY..................14
BUSINESS.......................19 OPINION........................ 22 SPORTS.......................... 24
GETOUT..........................27
CLASSIFIED....................31
T
he mountainous ridge of Paradise, California, is the kind of place you go to get away from it all – not experience a living hell. But from the safety of his mother’s Mesa home, Scot Rayl is still trying to come to grips with the hell he experienced last week in Paradise as fire obliterated the community. Rayl’s sister, Chandler resident Jennifer Simas, knew she had to do something to help the devastated community the moment her mother broke the awful news about the town where her brother lived, as well as other assorted family members. To help ease that suffering, Simas is organizing an East Valley donation drive with the help of a Gilbert nonprofit. “My mom called me and she said, ‘Paradise is on fire. I want to stay close to the phone,'” Simas said. “Every year they evacuate everybody because of fire (danger).
see FIRE page 7
(Kimberly Carrillo/Staff Photographer)
Caleb Carter, left, and Corey Yeaman load up a truck with supplies destined to help victims of the fire that leveled the retirement town of Paradise, California.