Today’s article pertains to the self-serving WLB proposal for a 200-acre residential and commercial development known as Capella, planned for the west side of LaCholla between Lambert and Naranja. There will be a PUBLIC HEARING on this proposal at this Wednesday’s Town Council meeting which begins at 6 PM.For those restless Oro Valley residents who are disposed to read public documents such as the Capella PAD (Planned Area Development), there is certainly a lot to learn about how the sausage gets made when it comes to development in today’s Oro Valley. But why should you have to read them? After all, Oro Valley has a capable Town Staff who, in the course of their duties, reviews such documents before they are posted for public view and before they are presented to the Town Council for a vote. I mean of course they do, right?
WLB Group vs. the Oro Valley General Plan
Let’s focus on just one area, but a critical one, of the Capella PAD. This is the Part XV Compliance Analysis. In this Analysis (provided by the applicant, WLB, on their own timeframe), the content of the proposed Capella PAD is evaluated against key criteria in the Oro Valley General Plan. The applicant provides a Y or N as to whether, in their view, their proposal meets this criteria and they explain their rationale in the “Comments” section.
Below are actual WLB responses regarding their inability or their refusal to comply with three criteria that the Oro Valley General Plan emphasizes as desirable approaches to new development.
1. General Plan Criteria
Mass grading techniques are minimized for project development.
WLB Comments
Mass grading reduces urban sprawl and also allows homebuilders to provide a higher level of amenities rather than spending money on less efficient grading techniques.
2. General Plan Criteria
Parking lots with greater than 20 car capacity are screened from adjacent uses and public thoroughfares.
WLB Comments
Meeting this criteria would compromise the viability of retail uses to be developed within the PAD. This criteria should be removed from the list because it is bad for Oro Valley’s struggling retail market.
3. General Plan Criteria
A favorable fiscal impact analysis.
WLB Comments
A fiscal analysis has not been prepared, although such analysis would surely confirm the economic benefits of this proposed PAD.
Are you buying what they’re selling?
• Do you (or does our Town Staff) believe that mass grading is actually the solution to urban sprawl?
• Does a struggling Oro Valley retail market really need more Capella retail?
• Are the economic benefits of the Capella PAD so self-evident that a fiscal impact analysis would simply be a waste of time? Or is it just that WLB doesn’t want to spend the money to have the analysis performed?
Flippant Responses
It’s astonishing that the WLB Group allowed their self-serving rationale for cutting costs to be included in their proposal which would be reviewed by the Town Staff and at least a few dozen Oro Valley residents. What remains in the final PAD brings into question the competence of both WLB and our Town Staff, who ostensibly fully review such submittals before posting them for public view. Why did the Town Staff not reject such flippant responses?
A Questionable Method of Operation?
More importantly, it may reveal the true feelings of both groups about the actual need for Public Hearings and public participation in the first place. Their M.O. seems to be:
“Nobody’s going to read it anyway and we can always talk around it, so why bother to craft a better answer? Better answers might cost WLB a little more money.”And we all know that costing WLB and its clients more money in an effort to comply with the voter-approved General Plan always appears to be the wrong answer.
In his own words
In Planning Administrator Bayer Vella’s own words…”Staff took a very long time to review this case, more than normally as far as rezoning.” If the Town Staff had truly reviewed the Capella PAD above and beyond the level to which PADs are normally reviewed, would the above WLB responses remain verbatim in the revised version coming up for Town Council review on May 16th?
It begins with Commissioner Swope’s question followed by Bayer Vella’s response. They seem to think that adding flexibility for WLB in the commercial zones might help them repeat the previous “success” of San Dorado.
Open mind or Case closed?
Is Staff reviewing the Capella PAD with an open mind or with the presumption of acceptance of the WLB proposal? What we do know for certain is that San Dorado is at a much better commercial location (Oracle and First) than anywhere in Capella and yet San Dorado is still looking for tenants according to the Town itself.
Click HERE and scroll down to Page 2 which shows that there are still four vacant buildings at San Dorado totaling almost 25,000 square feet in available retail space.
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Tim Bohen grew up in Southern California and moved to Oro Valley in 2015. He has a Bachelors degree in Physics from UCI and an MBA from Loyola Marymount. He is employed as a Systems Engineer. He graduated from the Community Academy in 2016 and the Citizens Academy in 2017. He was recently appointed to the Oro Valley Historic Preservation Commission and is a volunteer mediator with the Arizona Attorney General’s office. His interests include aviation and history, with his greatest interest currently being frontier life and how the West was settled.
