SavePhoenixHomes.com
Latest News

Councilwoman Pastor has reset this zoning case to the May 6, 2020 at 2:30
City Council meeting agenda as the result of the Covid-19 virus.

A member of the Planning Commission said she would not be doing her job if she voted to approve this project, and that two wrong votes don't make it right!

City Council Chambers located at 200 W. Jefferson Street. Parking available in the parking garage between 3rd and 4th Avenues, south of Washington. Please come, sign a card, and mark your opposition to the case.

Send emails to the City Council about your opposition to Z-51-19!

Welcome and thank you for visiting!

STOP THE TOWER!

Last year the Phoenix Country Club tried to bring High Rise (H-R) High Density District zoning to a parking lot on 7th Street and Thomas which is outside of the city core, the Central corridor and even the Transit Overlay District. The Phoenix Country Club failed!

The zoning was changed to Mid-Rise (M-R) instead of H-R, and M-R zoning won't let the Phoenix Country Club build the TOWER that it wants. This year the Phoenix Country Club is at it again, now asking for Planned Urban Development (PUD) zoning to avoid the restrictions in an M-R zoning district. PUD is a zoning district where the restrictions are written by the Developer.

We oppose the PUD rezoning in case Z-51-19:

1. 110 foot height. This is too high for the area, a more than a half mile off of Central, 1/4 mile outside the village core, and more than 1/2 mile from the light rail. The Phoenix Country Club simply wants to plop a TOWER in one of its parking lots.

2. Open Space. The PUD seeks to reduce the open space required in an M-R district from 30% to 25%. The Phoenix Country Club is trying to preserve as little open space as possible in this PUD, which it will later argue is a template for redevelopment of other parcels that it might want to carve out of its property next. Piece by piece the Phoenix Country Club will reduce the open space that it has said should be preserved.

3. Parking Podium. The PUD proposes a 25 foot tall concrete parking podium on the corner of Thomas and 7th Street that will forever surround the corner with concrete walls, forever preventing any other amenities or uses.

4. Parking Problem. The Phoenix Country Club frequently hosts large events, and plopping a TOWER in its parking area will reduce the Phoenix Country Club's parking by a large number of spaces - we believe over one hundred.

The Phoenix Country Club is out to cannibalize itself, and spread blight to nearby neighborhoods and properties, where everyone will defer maintenance and improvements so that they too can build a TOWER where it doesn't belong. Speculators will buy up houses and rent them, letting the properties deteriorate and become vacant, and then buy up more, while the neighborhood withers and dies. We have seen this type of speculation and the deterioration that it causes up and down Central Avenue throughout the Midtown area, and now the Phoenix Country Club wants to bring that progress to the neighborhoods of Coronado, Country Club Park, Country Club Manor, and La Hacienda.

The project claims to be "walkable" but its orientation and design demonstrate a hostility to the core principles of a walkable city: it has more parking spaces for the TOWER than mandated by the city code, and the TOWER is set far back from the corner of 7th Street and Thomas.

This TOWER is nothing more than another "Crystal Point" development that only seeks to benefit the Phoenix Country Club and the Developer, while ignoring basic design principles, decades of city planning, billions of dollars of investment into the light rail, and the valid concerns of neighbors who reasonably believed TOWER development would be limited to the Central Corridor. While the Developer and the Phoenix Country Club seek a TOWER zoning entitlement handout from the City of Phoenix, that are contrary to the code provision allowing for a TOWER, the Phoenix Country Club continues to enjoy immunity from the 2.17% City of Phoenix's property tax on the golf course because the golf course is a "county island": property within the City of Phoenix but not part of the city.

SavePhoenixHomes.com is an outreach effort on behalf of the neighborhood associations and hundreds of neighbors opposed to this too dense, too intense TOWER. The PUD zoning will be harmful as it is to us, we believe this threatens EVERY Phoenix homeowner with bad rezoning precedent. We all rely on existing zoning to protect our family's investment, privacy, and ability to reside free from inappropriate density and incompatible height. The Phoenix City General Plan promises neighbors with a level certainty as to living in our great city. This proposal casts all such assurance of certainty into doubt and promises a proliferation of TOWERS where ever a Developer thinks it can get financing.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Contact Robert Warnicke, President of the La Hacienda Historic Neighborhood Association, Robertwarnicke@yahoo.com

Follow Us   
Go To Top