Submitted by the City of Sedona AZ
Sedona AZ (June 24, 2014) – The City of Sedona Arizona is hosting a community planning meeting to introduce a very important planning opportunity for the “Western Gateway” of Sedona. This community event is on Wednesday, July 2, 2014, 5:30 in the evening at the Yavapai College Sedona Center for Arts and Technology, 4215 Arts Village Drive, Room 34, Sedona.
The Western Gateway Community Focus Area (CFA) is the area including the Cultural Park, Sedona Red Rock High School, Yavapai College, Sedona Medical Center and general vicinity. The City will be preparing a specific plan that will address a variety of topics such as land use, circulation, the environment, community, and the economy. This meeting will introduce the planning process and time frame, the planning area, how the future plan will be used and most importantly, how everyone can be a part of this process. This meeting will also provide an opportunity to discuss concerns, ask questions, and provide thoughts and ideas on this area.
The Sedona City Council supports this focus as a way to begin implementing the new Sedona Community Plan. Although the new Community Plan did not make significant changes to land uses on specific properties, it identifies thirteen general priority areas for more detailed planning. Within these thirteen Community Focus Areas (or CFA’s), specific plans will be developed that are consistent with the Sedona Community Plan’s vision, but are intended to provide better guidance for future development. As part of City Council’s direction, staff is initiating this specific planning effort for the CFA’s around the “Western Gateway” to the community, including the general area described above.
The City’s Citizens Engagement Program is also playing a vital role by including a working group of citizens in this CFA planning project. The Engagement Program provides several opportunities for citizens to be involved in other City projects.
For questions about this CFA planning process and how to participate, contact Mike Raber at mraber@SedonaAZ.gov or 928-204-7106. To learn more about this planning effort and to submit comments, visit www.SedonaaAZ.gov/CFA1. The website includes a link to Engage Sedona, an on-line forum where anyone may provide comments. The comment form also allows you to enter your email address to receive updates.
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Who dreams up these things? Don’t these people ever sleep. WESTERN GATEWAY. Oops. Main Street watch out.:-)
What needs to be done? No consensus in any of the meetings that I attended. And not this voter from that area of the city. Leave it.
They need to hire a Manager, Western Gateway, pay them a six figure salary, then appoint an Assistant Manager, Western Gateway, pay them six figures also. Then commission a study, spend about $600,000 on an outside firm. Then appoint a commission of citizens to review the study. About 5 years and a couple of million tax dollars later they will do another study.
Yes, I am kidding suggesting the above. Unfortunately that is what the “City” of Sedona usually does.
Or we could just vote NO on home rule/Alternative Expenditure limitation, disincorporate Sedona and avoid spending the money.
Ask the VOC for advice. They can create an illusion for your West Gateway like here.
Some businesses in the VOC give up their whole identity branding themselves as the GATEWAY to Sedona. Visitors often feel disoriented when finding Sedona thinking they were already in Sedona.
The forest is the gateway to Sedona.
Now they are calling themselves Sedona Village again.
Luckily there are only a small aging handful but they would be your goto people. They will take you on a Magical Journey.
Don’t you already have a hotel proposed there? You can always blast out the red rock if you need room to add buildings or an art piece. Just make it red, visitors won’t notice. Who cares about the residents?
Isn’t it interesting the level of dedication to a Community Plan that essentially created the concepts of CFA’s back when the city became incorporated? How many things in our lives have changed, been eliminated, or become obsolete? That the City has not moved past plans drawn in a totally different time period demonstrates a lack of vision and responsiveness to external changes. IMO, the “new” plan is nothing more than continuing to build out Sedona; changing zoning to allow more multiple housing and making it denser, eliminating buffer zones (see Posse Grounds Park Plan), etc.
City is jealous of VOC. It kept its charm & its focus on being Sedona, land of the red rocks. VOC has Bell Rock, Cathedral, Courthouse & the forest. Chamber put VOC member Sedona Trading out of business with its lack of support & my advice to every VOC business? Stay out of the city chamber because it sucks AND you DON’T need another Chamber in its place. Sit back & reap the advertising awards w/o paying the dough to pseudo focus business groups. Run your business the right way to be successful.
Well that is a good one, run your business right……….. Clearly you don’t have one or is it in the city limits. Those in the city limits pay double for everything. Sales tax, bed tax, licenses, permits, sales tax on the space they rent, labor, material. Just because it Sedona everyone thinks they can charge them more. I see it as the city are pretenders, they like to pretend that voc, oak creek canyon, enchantment are in the city, they’re not. They want to look bigger then they are. Ego. Yes I agree VOC is prettier. It’s not a city chamber but a regional chamber, that’s why they should get their hands out of city funding. We’re on the same page@VOC Ellen except for the running of businesses. Sedona region is the tough one, not business friendly. Tourists feel it also. That is why they are one-timers. One visit is enough for them.
Whatever is done there, the City should require a thorough feasibility study first to determine if the market will support the proposed use. The “Cultural Park” declined to do that and they failed miserably, leaving us scarred land, ruins and weeds.
Any development there should be minimum density. Traffic on 89A is already intolerable, and current proposals would dump about 350 more hotel rooms and more retail businesses into that traffic.
Any developer on West 89A should contribute financially to improve West 89A so it might meet the traffic, which will grow as more tourists are attracted and more developments are built. Yes, I mean medians and some roundabouts.
@Jim A few years back the City worked with ADOT to get medians. ADOT was willing; businesses along 89A had a fit! (would deter access to curb cuts) Maybe things would be different now but it’s doubtful. Yes, a feasibility study should HAVE been done and for sure with all that’s on the table for a proposed Western Gateway it SHOULD BE top of the list. Of course that would make sense. It seems that’s a missing word in this administration’s vocabulary.