Sedona AZ – The following is a letter to the SedonaEye.com editor:
Imagine the unimaginable.
Imagine two new villages, each about the size of Cornville, between Sedona and Cottonwood. Then imagine these villages are deliberately located on either side of Spring Creek, just off of AZ State Route 89A.
Imagine the impact on the threatened and endangered species that inhabit Spring Creek, especially after a monsoon rain, when runoff from roads, driveways, and yards finds its way into the creek.
Imagine the burden 10,000 new residents would place on already stressed infrastructure: Roads, emergency services, healthcare systems, and water supply.
Yavapai County AZ
Finally, imagine purchasing “affordable housing,” then paying $700 a month to rent the land your home sits on because the developer still owns the land.
While this may seem like a nightmare to you, it’s the dream of two separate developers requesting zoning variances from Yavapai County.
The developer of Spring Creek Ranch envisions 3,100 housing units, on land the developer will continue to own.
The developer of Villa Bellagio proposes approximately 2,000 units, 6 artificial lakes, and 5-story structures.
These two separate developments would be in close proximity, each straddling Spring Creek. For either proposal to proceed, they will require rezoning from RCU-2A (Residential; Rural) to PAD (Planned Area Development). The developers have requested rezoning from Yavapai County.
County Planning and Zoning has scheduled a public rezoning hearing on Spring Creek Ranch for Thursday, December 19, 2019 at 9:00 AM at County offices, 10 S 6th Street in Cottonwood.
Speak out by attending this meeting, and sending an email to planning@yavapai.us. In your email, identify the rezoning request you are writing about (Spring Creek Ranch), AND include your name and address, without which your email will not be included in the record.
It’s critical that residents speak up so the unimaginable doesn’t become reality.
Craig Swanson
Wild Horse Mesa Drive
Sedona AZ
https://sedonaeye.com/county-planning-and-zoning-to-hear-spring-creek-housing-development-application/
This gets any traction and every politician in Sedona & Cottonwood & Verde will lose their seats. You want change at Verde Valley city halls and town councils, try and get this passed.
DISGUSTING abuse of environmental, local law enforcement capacity.
Where will the WATER come from to fill six lakes? WASTEWATER? Sounds like a Sedona council plan being turded out again. Sedona can’t pay for a wastewater system with its population & you expect the county residents to pay for this land grab & destruction!?
Wasn’t this settled with that piece of crap development proposal by Chicago group outside city limits? Suggest City Council/Mayor get on this, squelch it now before any damage done.
Welcome to the new LA and SF lifestyles of the mediocre. Goodbye lovely views and dark nights and peace and quiet tranquility that Sedona was known for because people don’t revere or are attracted to Sedona for its commercial offerings. When you sit at Mariposa and see and hear traffic, you won’t revere it or pay to come back. If you sit on a veranda at night and see and hear traffic, you won’t come back and if you spend two days of your vacation feeling like you never left home, you won’t be back. We have art galleries and high end resorts because we aren’t mediocre. This city is fast becoming another strip center and ADU and PUD from being mediocre. Small is the greatest wonder of all for Sedona.
Well that’s what happens when long term housing disappears cause of Air BnB.
Growth is gonna happen.. Do it safely please.
That’s BS @Tina. Airbnbs don’t have a thing to do with these developments. This is about destroying fragile high desert lands to benefit a few local wallets under guise of being others. This is about a few here using the system to line their pockets. I’m sitting in Sky Harbor disgusted reading news and the morons replies.
George G says:
So George, it was OK to strip the land and build your home and Sedona ?
You say. This is about a few here using the system to line their pockets.
So to bad if they own the land…. You got yours and now STOP.NIMBY.
It’s OK to million $ Mac mansions but not regular housing ?
George, growth is coming you will not stop it, we need to manage it. The land owners have the rights to build. It is not greed, you got your’s! so everyone else is just greedy ? Or perhaps they just want to do business and build some homes it is done all over the world even Arizona.
Paul said Wasn’t this settled with that piece of crap development proposal by Chicago group outside city limits? Suggest City Council/Mayor get on this, squelch it now before any damage done.
This is a county issue, city council can do nothing…. And the county is all about growth. We don’t want to be come Prescott Valley but we will not stop growth in building or tourism…. and so what if OUT SIDE people are the investors. you want to stop it then buy the land.
I’m w/Paul C. Yes, it’s ok to build bigger homes, Steve Segner, some even as big as yours, because small, medium and large and big mac and tiny homes are fine with America, we’ve earned the right with our hard work and wise choices. I’ve seen homes in SF that’re beautiful, but the s*** on the sidewalks make them worthless for the s******* and the s*** ons. Protecting the environment means protecting the environment. A civil society means that the society is based on rules and consequences.
Your arguments @Steve always deflect away from the educated and lean toward the uneducated, possibly a reflection of your own state of brain? You as well as the rest of us in Sedona know that homes not commercial are the bread and butter of the developers and builders and government here and that (with a few exceptions we all know) pride goes in the designs and quality of workmanship. Most of the homes here have voluntarily kept the viewsheds from being ruined by minimizing their impacts on the desert, Sedona homes are ecologically friendly called “low and no show” while under-educated people might want “slash and flash for my cash” are discouraged and rarely seen here.
Beautifully designed and built homes are lived in by all socioeconomic peoples here in Sedona and not all are well educated or well heeled. Factually, the majority of our homes are lived in by under-earners who join together to rent rooms long term, making a community of residents. You are ignorant of these arrangements because you like to verbally pontificate and mislead about Airbnbs or short term rentals like the BnBs you own. I guarantee that your canyon home is inhabited by many others when you aren’t there, proving my point about under-earners benefitting from big homes.
Segner, it is imperative that you realize that your wealth was realized utilizing the principles of free choice and free will and opportunities created by others. You maximized others efforts for personal gain and like most well heeled fascists you want others to believe you’re self made and rose above the ashes of no education and poverty. What you did, Steve, was ride the gravy train built by others, and good for you. That’s what American opportunity is. If you want to drive from the canyon into town, do it, and if I want to drive from Flagstaff for most of a year because my girlfriend prefers it and not live in Sedona, I’ll do it. Don’t think or decide for me, that’s my education.
Gene, Sedona says:
Gean I the one fighting for work force housing, we need smaller lots for smaller homes.
Sedona Is working on housing and I support what their are doing,
I supply subsidized work for housing now and I want to build more, but to do that we need some land use changes.
Developers will be coming they are not evil people they are just doing what they do” build homes” and I hope small affordable ones for purchase not all rental.
Counties promote growth, there are no “No growth counties” in Arizona so we need to work with our county and city leaders to get the developments we want and need NIBMY talk will not work with city ot county.
if that were true why are you converting employee housing into overflow rooms?
New blood in the valley! Build-it! Hypocrisy abounds.
There’s no proof we need housing,a bogus lie to get grant money that we don’t qualify for without that lie. Airbnb just announced yesterday they’re instituting a new policy to homeowners & rules for renters that makes it more difficult. Keep up Sedona. Things don’t stand still.
Mr. Williams,
I sincerely hope that the information that’s been surfacing regarding the Villa Bellagio and Spring Creek Ranch Projects have not been approved, let alone considered.
The principal consideration in projects of this magnitude has to be WATER. Where will water come from to support communities of the size that these two projects advertise? The devastation to our landscape and further encroachment upon our ecological space is of equal importance. Additional considerations have to focus on the impact to the infrastructures of surrounding communities that are not capable of handling the existing influx of people into the Verde Valley.
While tourism has long been a major consideration to the revenue of Yavapai County, it would seem that the above projects would diminish the very reason tourists come to Yavapai County which is to see the beauty and uniqueness of the area they plan to build upon.
Information that is surfacing indicates that the developers are not Arizonans and I personally encourage these developers to pursue their “dreams” in their own areas and leave what is left of our great State to the votes, considerations and wishes of its residents.
Respectfully,
Joseph “Jack” Graham
Cottonwood Arizona
Where are progressives, Sierra Club, KSB, Democrats of Red Rocks, socialists, environmentalists? For shame you don’t care about this and that makes me madder than hell.
I’m against this. We don’t want it. We don’t like Sedona to begin with and can’t and don’t want to be like those snots. We don’t need a bunch of people in Walmart or Safeway causing restaurants to raise prices that locals can’t afford to eat or have to get in lines to sit down. Let them stay where they live now and make it better instead of ruining our homes like they did theirs. We HATE Californians here and they better stay in Prescott and Sedona. Everyone is a jerk that doesn’t care about how things are done here and yack about how it’s done there BUT THEY’RE HERE AND NOT THERE AND WE WANT YOU THERE AND NOT HERE. Don’t they get it how stupid they sound? Don’t they understand we KNOW why you’re here because you couldn’t afford to stay there.
Read this today searching for other information. Couldn’t resist it. After reading this post I found a good place to submit it to help keep the lights on in AZ.
He nailed it. California isn’t the same anymore and anyone who wants a looney monolithic political base, go to Illinois because you’ll be welcome there and nowhere else. You want growth? You’re insane.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/so-long-california/
It seemed P&Z didn’t care about us or our opposition at the hearings. Believe it. Dollars in pockets are Talking louder?