We weren’t big fans of the Greenbelt 88 multi-family proposal to largely replace a shopping center at Hayden and Osborn with apartments. But the way in which it passed the Scottsdale City Council last night on a 5-2 vote (with Mayor Ortega and Councilwoman Littlefield dissenting) was important and instructive.
The majority seemed to get what Scottsdale voters expressed in a recent poll. The city has a housing affordability crisis and that’s displacing too many of the nurses, teachers, firefighters, police officers, and city employees that enrich our community with their front-line service. Indeed, only 28% of Scottsdale’s nearly 2,600 employees live in the city and the Parks Department is short some 150 positions as we write, largely attributed to Scottsdale’s spiraling housing costs. That’s not good.
Scottsdale’s extreme no-growth contingent – which is 12% of the city’s electorate according to the recent poll – seems not to care. Fortunately, the vast majority of Scottsdale voters do. And so, apparently, does a majority of the City Council. That’s good news, no matter our reservations about Greenbelt 88.
It also bodes well for an upcoming vote on the 92 Ironwood proposal later this month, which has been endorsed by the Arizona Nurses Association and is about as obviously meritorious a redevelopment as there has been in Scottsdale for years, as it seeks to replace an unsightly, empty office complex. And there is no residential in close proximity to the site. We don’t need to belabor the benefits further since we have done so on other occasions.
Instead, we opine here about something that is very important politically. The battle cry for the twelve percenters is that some of the majority that has voted in favor of The Miller and now Greenbelt 88 plans are dishonoring their commitments to slower growth.
Um, no. Because facts, which can be stubborn things, say the opposite. Consider that the “pro-growth” City Council of 2020 approved 1,996 new apartments. But what about the new, more cautious to growth council of 2021? The amount plummeted to only 338 apartments approved last year. And none, like 92 Ironwood, in the northern part of the city where the housing crisis is becoming particularly acute. These totals represent a dramatic difference. They are the definition of allegiance to campaign promises. Approve good projects. Reject bad ones.
And, though we could be wrong, we are unaware of any other multi-family proposals that would come before this City Council for the balance of the year.
Stopping all residential development, as some want to do, would be terrible for a plethora of reasons. It would also give lift to draconian state legislation that seeks to eliminate city zoning rights and give, by fiat, high-density residential rights to property owners. State politicians have their eye on Scottsdale.
There is a better way. Fortunately, the majority of the City Council seems to be finding it. Collaborate, compromise and approve quality development, even as the pipeline for it has decreased markedly in Scottsdale. Greenbelt 88 got the green light last night. 92 Ironwood should in two weeks. After all how can the same people who supported 89 units to the acres for The Miller at Miller and Camelback or 48 units to the acre across the street at Gentry on the Green not support 33 units to the acre 92 Ironwood has proposed, having already approved 33 units to the acre for Greenbelt 88? It shall all be interesting to watch. And hopefully philosophically consistent which makes for good policy and politics.