Community
www.SanTanSun.com
June 17-30, 2017
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June 17-30, 2017 www.SanTanSun.com
Residents pleased SRP power lines will be buried, vow to see it through BY BRENT RUFFNER
Some Chandler residents felt their voices weren’t being heard. At the last minute, they found a reponse. City of Chandler officials announced they’ve struck a deal with SRP on a proposal to bury some power lines along the Price Road Corridor rather than run 130-foot-tall lines above ground near the hotly contested Ellis Road route. The city will use $11.5 million in an account funded by the utility to bury voltage lines and improve the appearance of various electrical or water facilities. The proposal is expected to be submitted to the Arizona Power Plant and Transmission Line Siting Committee the week of July 24. The council voted to approve the agreement at its regular meeting on June 8. Residents of three nearby neighborhoods fought with city officials over health concerns and the potential for property values to plummet. A few of those residents filed paperwork to start a limited liability company six days before the last public meeting was held earlier this month. The group, called Support and Value Ellis Residents (SAVER), plans to see the process through to the end. The new line would primarily affect residents of Brittany Heights, Pecos Ranch Estates and Vintage Villas. “We organized to have a formal structure in the event we would file in a formal capacity as an intervener,” said Heidi Paakkonen, who
(Photo by Kimberly Carrillo)
Tom Novy of SRP explains the power line plan to a resident at the June 1 open house. Chandler will use $11.5 million in an account funded by SRP to bury power lines.
lives in Brittany Heights. “If Ellis Road had been on the application, then we would have proceeded with that.” Paakkonen said she is one of the original
homeowners in the development, which was constructed about 17 years ago. She said she was “elated” to hear the news that the two entities were eliminating the Ellis
Road option. She said residents had been concerned about the proposed route and the proximity of schoolchildren who are picked up and dropped off in the area. “We didn’t want to be just members of the public who were limited to just a few minutes to speak during the line siting committee’s call to the public,” she said. “We wanted to be at the table for all the presentations and for the hearing. If this matter ever went to a settlement conference, you know we wanted to be there. That’s how invested we are.” The agreement says SRP will file an application proposing Price Road as the exclusive route for the double-circuit 230-kilovolt power line to be constructed from the northern end of the Price Road Corridor south to a new proposed substation. The once-contested line is now planned to be buried underground in a half-mile stretch. A separate section of above-ground lines will be proposed from I-10 to Loop 101 on the south side of Loop 202. The city will also provide right-of-way access on Price and Willis roads to the Gila River Indian Community boundary on the west, as well as help relocate existing water and sewer utilities as necessary. On March 28, residents of three nearby neighborhoods expressed concerns at a see
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Retail sector showing strong growth Tribal leaders: Freeway planners in Chandler, rest of East Valley bulldozed us BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY
BY PAUL MARYNIAK
While conventional wisdom says consumers are abandoning brick-andmortar stores in droves in favor of online retailers like Amazon, the retail sector in Chandler and the rest of the East Valley is showing promising signs of growth. The Mesa/Chandler/Gilbert submarket posted net absorption numbers of 114,558 square feet through the first quarter of 2017, according to market research by commercial real estate company CBRE. There was an additional 346,335 square feet of retail under construction as of the first quarter. Net absorption is a critical statistic that represents the total new occupied square footage in a given sector minus square footage that is no longer occupied by tenants, said Sanford Burstyn, vice president of investments and director in the National Retail Group for Marcus & Millichap.
Chandler alone had net absorption of just under 500,000 square feet of retail space in 2016, according to market analysis provided by City of Chandler Economic Development Office using CoStar Group data. In 2016, the East Valley submarket — Chandler, Mesa, Gilbert and Queen Creek — saw a spike in new delivered retail square footage to nearly 1.25 million square feet. That is a noticeable rise from the retail square footage delivered annually in 2010 to 2015, which topped out at just less than 500,000 square feet in 2015, according to statistics prepared by Burstyn. The 2016 figures are still well below the boom years of 2006 to 2008, when there was roughly 2.75 million to 4 million square feet delivered annually.
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The Gila River Indian Community told a federal appeals court that the government highway agencies ignored the health and traditions of Native Americans, especially the poor who live on the reservation, when they planned the South Mountain Freeway. “The agencies largely ignored all of the land south and west of the Freeway and the people who live there. Many of those people may be poor, may be Native American, and may work in agriculture, but they count too,” attorneys for the community said in characterizing the actions of the Arizona Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration. The Gila Community’s brief, filed a few weeks ago in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, now throws the next move in the case to the court. The appeals court still must rule on a request by an organization of 21 Southwest
(Photo courtesy of Arizona Department of Transportation)
Crews are continuing to work on freeway walls around Pecos Road and 17th Avenue for the South Mountain Freeway as the appeals case drags on.
tribes to intervene in the case, and set a date for oral arguments. Whether oral arguments will be further delayed by allowing the tribes to intervene is unclear.
F E AT U R E STO R I E S Bribery case snares key East Valley players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . community . . . . . . Page 08 City offering small business development workshops . . . . . . business . . . . . . . . . . Page 22 Local students named National Merit Scholarship winners . youth . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 29 Teen grows out hair to benefit kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . neighbors . . . . . . . Page 44 Local teen earns national art award . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . arts . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 65
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More Community . . . . . . . 1-21 Business . . . . . . . . 22-28 Youth . . . . . . . . . . 29-36 Opinion . . . . . . . . 37-38 Neighbors . . . . . . 43-60 Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . 61-68 Spirituality . . . . . 69-71 Directory . . . . . . . 72-73 Classifieds . . . . . . 74-75 Where to Eat . . . 76-78