"Airport Land Use: Officials, planners pushing for flexibility around Phoenix Gateway Airport"

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Mesa council, planners pushing for flexibility around Gateway Airport
By Gary Nelson
The Arizona Republic


Mesa is inching closer to establishing a plan for the Gateway area, one that
will help fulfill its vision of attracting 100,000 jobs over the next
several decades.

Last week, Mesa's City Council and planning board endorsed, in concept, a
bare-bones, black-and-white map that sketches in broad terms the overall
land-use categories in the Gateway area.

This flexible approach is a dramatic turnaround from the direction taken
prior to the old City Council leaving office. That body came to the brink of
voting on one of two detailed, color-coded alternative land-use plans for
Gateway.

"The previous council . . . felt that the process was moving a little too
quickly, and I agree with that," said Mayor Scott Smith, adding that the
alternatives presented to the previous council had "leapfrogged" several
other crucial steps in the planning process. Detailed proposals should come
much later, he added.

Mark McLaren, a vice president of HDR Engineering, briefed the two panels on
his company's $860,000 study of the Gateway area, which Mesa commissioned
last year to guide development there.

McLaren said protecting Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport must be the overarching
goal if the area is to generate 100,000 high-paying jobs.

But the knottiest issue is how to do that while building enough homes to
support people who will work there, without resulting in those homes
stifling airport operations due to noise complaints.

The market probably will push housing among the earliest area developments,
Smith said. Noting that the area will demand massive new infrastructure, he
said, "What market force is going to drive infrastructure? That's going to
be houses."

And houses, he said, will "run directly contrary to airplanes."

City Manager Chris Brady said, however, that it might not be an either-or
proposition. The way airports and cities mesh is changing, Brady said, and,
"We can't keep saying that residential is a threat always to airports.
Because we don't know, 20 years from now, how those airplanes are going to
take off, what those noise levels are going to be."

Brady said protecting the airport is paramount, but the city might not be
able to prescribe exactly how that will happen.

Offering flexibility to developers will be the key, he said.

"I think we need to challenge the market to bring to us those elements that
will make that work," he said.

 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************