VESTAR'S MARKETPLACE

Two letters to the editor February 14, 2007 edition of the "Explorer":

Will others get the same perks as Vestar?

In response to the Jan. 31 guest opinion written by David Malin of Vestar, developer of Oro Valleyâs Marketplace, I would agree that at least the company he represents has come up with a great, exclusive way to do business.

On the other hand, I am concerned that our council has not really learned from the past. At one time, there was a great opportunity, we were told, to have a luxury hotel in town. The town decided not to let the big one get away. Located close to the exclusive Stone Canyon golf course, it boasts a gigantic waterfall showing that there is plenty of water in Oro Valley, besides martinis.

To assure that the hotel was really coming, they set up all kinds of financial help. Also, they built a water supply tank, something that we had to live without in Sun City.

But, the hoteliers decided that all that was not enough, and they took their business elsewhere. It was a tragicomedy without par: Council members went into hiding as citizens asked what happened.

The tragedy is not really that the hotel space has remained empty to this day, but that due to the unfailing law of unintended consequences — in this case the 14th Constitutional Amendment, which ensures equal protection under the law — other hotels came forward demanding that they be granted equal tax exemptions. The town got no hotel and had to give back tax monies they had intended to keep.

And this is exactly what is going to happen with other commercial developers regarding Vestar’s incentive. Since Vestar has a share of sales-tax revenue, we want it too, they’ll say.

Let’s hope that some enterprising lawyer does not want to apply this retroactively, as the El Conquistador did before.

Hector Conde,
Oro Valley
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Vestar tenants will change OV for worse

When we moved to Oro Valley just four years ago, we moved to a town with two-lane roads and no sidewalks or traffic lights to speak of. It was peaceful with minimal traffic and therefore no noise, no congestion and no pollution. Four years later, and we now have four-lane roads, traffic lights, and a soon-to-be shopping mall with Wal-Mart, of all things, as a main attraction.

We were content to have a grocery store, post office and gas station within a convenient, 10-minute drive because these are places that we (and most people) visit once or twice a week. Otherwise, we were happy to drive 20 to 30 minutes for a monthly haircut, a monthly shopping mall trip or a twice-yearly trip to an electronics or furniture store. We didn’t need or want every known retail establishment and big box store located in our backyard. If that’s what we wanted, we would have moved to the city. Who goes to Best Buy on such a regular basis that they need the convenience of it being right in their neighborhood?

And didn’t Vestar promise us a “unique” mall with stores not found in “Anywhere, USA?” So how did we end up with Wal-Mart and Best Buy? In 2005, the top three police call sites in Tucson were Wal-Mart, Park Place Mall and Tucson Mall. What does this say for the future of Oro Valley?

Don Cox (“Flawed Argument then, now, later,” Letters to the Editor, Feb. 7) seems to think that a big plus of having the new mall in town will be “the air pollution you won’t create by not driving to Tucson or Marana.” What about all the people from Tucson and Marana, not to mention SaddleBrooke, Oracle and Catalina who will be driving to Oro Valley to shop at the new mall? Won’t they be bringing their auto pollution into Oro Valley?

We’ll never understand why people move to an out-of-the-way place and then immediately start complaining that everything is too far away. If the most important things to you are convenience and a nearby Wal-Mart and Best Buy, why then did you move to Oro Valley?

Robert and Diane Peters,
Oro Valley