HaMany of Mesa’s planning staff issued a rare “reject” recommendation to a rezoning case filed before the Planning and Zoning Commission this month, just south of State Route 60 on Baseline and Wrecker Road. claimed a vacant lot in the Arizona Health and Technology Park located in Remains zoned for medical campus.
Faced with staff opposition, the board was split in the middle on whether to allow the rezoning of the 10-acre parcel in question into a 394-unit multi-family residential complex.
The site is part of a 254-acre district envisioned in 2004 by city officials as a hospital-focused employment hub with a focus on health, technology and education.
The medical school of AT Still University and several medical facilities operate in the park, but the hospital planned by Tenet Healthcare never broke ground.
In 2007, competitor Banner Health opened Banner Gateway Medical Center on the west side of Higley, and lawyers from Tenet’s holding company, the VHS Acquisition Subsidiary, told the board that Tenet was no longer interested in building the hospital. Told. On a prime location in Mesa, he left the company with 65 acres of undeveloped land.
“Tenet Healthcare is not in business to compete with companies already serving a patient base. There is no room for another (hospital) campus.
To dispose of 65 acres of land, the company has now submitted applications for two of Mesa’s most marketable projects. It is an apartment complex and a distribution warehouse.
However, the land is zoned as a “special character area” that is “designed to provide a single-use large area such as an educational campus, airport, or medical facility.”
For the larger of the two lots, Tenet is proposing a 50-acre distribution warehouse complex spanning eight buildings totaling 675,000 square feet.
The so-called Baseline Logistics Park was first put on the agenda in July, but the applicant has requested three hearings to continue, and the 10-acre Millennium Superstition Springs Apartment project has been approved for health park zoning changes. was the first case of board.
Logistics Park has a hearing scheduled for September 28th.
Adjacent AT Still University opened in Mesa in 2001 and includes medical, dental, and graduate schools in health and health sciences.
AT Still supports the Millenium Superstition Springs apartment project by viewing it as student housing, but otherwise wants to keep its vision of zoning for a specialty medical campus intact.
“Academic health care communities are places of learning (places of clinical care), places of sharing and creation of ideas (places of interaction), places of developing assistive technologies, places of exercise, places of living, and communities. A place that inspires children to dream and dream (schools, excursions, AT Still’s vice president of strategic partnerships, Dr. Gary Cloud, said in a statement:
“The trucking center is important to community and society, but it does not support the vision of the immediate academic community,” he wrote.
City officials have not yet considered the warehouse complex. But when it comes to multifamily housing, city officials struggle to maintain professional campus zoning for the Arizona Health and Technology Park.
“One of the main problems here is that this is one of the main areas of the city. In reality, such a large area is left to be developed for employment purposes. ‘ said Nana Appiah, director of development services, defending the city’s denial recommendation.
“We recognize the need (for housing), but there are several other areas in the city that could be developed for housing,” he said.
Appiah said the city is constantly being asked by developers to rezoning commercial or industrial land for residential use, and Mesa often allows it.
But Appiah says: economic development of the city. ”
AnnElise Makin, a resident who frequents Arizona’s Health and Technology Park for work, has been scouring the area’s 65-acre vacant lot like a hawk since she spotted a sign posted about an upcoming rezoning of the logistics park. I’ve been watching over
She favors the apartment because it can be used as student housing for AT Still, but thinks a larger warehouse project is completely wrong for the area.
“It’s the last thing Mesa needs, another big warehouse complex.
Lawyers representing the apartment complex project argued that the specialty campus concept had had plenty of time to come to fruition. If there was more demand from high-end medical and tech users in the field, they would have appeared by now.
Some Planning Commission members were sympathetic to this argument.
Director Troy Peterson said: 10 years? ”
Board member Jessica Sarkissian speculates that the success of the city’s other tech hubs may be driving away interest in the Baseline and Recker sites.
“At this point, I think some are being ripped off by the madness going on in the Elliott (Road Tech) Corridor because they are somewhat close in terms of mileage,” said Sarkisian. rice field.
Others objected to the idea that the city should change its health and tech zoning due to long vacancies on land.
Appiah said that if the city doesn’t relent whenever developers want to rezoning industrial land because it’s underutilized, Mesa will “rezoot the majority of its land use … into residential areas.” said he would.
“This is one of the sites that we believe will be in more demand, and if we can get those uses, there are other potential uses to save,” Appiah said. rice field.
Board member Jeffrey Pitcher noted that as landowners, Tenet “controls who gets in there, so the fact that it’s vacant is their own choice.”
“The other thing I’m concerned about is that it’s north of the baseline between Highley and Greenfield. I don’t know.”
Pitcher, along with Chairman of the Board Jeffrey Crockett and Director Sherri Allen, voted on a motion to deny the rezone request for the VHS acquisition.
Sarkissian, Peterson and Genesse Montes voted against the motion to dismiss.
The motion was denied due to the absence of the seventh Director who could have tied the score.
City attorneys said that when the case is brought to the city council, the agenda will report the board’s 3-to-3 vote.
