Town Council rejects North Park expansion proposal Hears no-underpass plan for Sahuarita Road

The Town Council Monday voted to move ahead with development of the 10-acre North Park in hopes of getting playing fields open by the fall of 2008 rather than continue negotiating with Rancho Sahuarita over a possible 25-acre expansion.

The council also heard a report on widening of Sahuarita Road that calls for a two-step, grade-level pedestrian crossing, or pelican approach, rather than an overpass or underpass that was favored by Rancho Sahuarita.

Under the pelican design, which would be near the school administration building, pedestrians would press a button to activate a traffic light and cross half the road to the median strip, then walk 40 feet or so on the median to another set of lights, press a button there and cross the other half of the roadway.

The Sahuarita Road median strip at first will be at least 44 feet wide, when the road is built with four lanes, and then the median will be narrowed to 22 feet when the road is expanded inward to six lanes, Robert M. Suarez of RS Engineering told the council.

At its narrowest point, next to left-turn lanes, the median will be 10 to 12 feet wide, senior project manager Jerry L. Pelland said.

The council did not take action on the roadway presentation.

6-1 vote for smaller park

Rancho Sahuarita Vice President Cort Chalfant implored the council to take a few more days to work out the details for the park expansion, to no avail, as even Rancho Sahuarita resident Kara Egbert, chairwoman of the town’s advisory Parks and Recreation Commission, said the town must move forward quickly with current plans.

The council voted 6-1 to develop the smaller park. Council member Marty Moreno voted no, without comment.

She later said she had heard from residents who wanted the council to take more time to try to work out the problem with the developer’s proposal.

Council member Scott Downs said he struggled with the issue, but voted yes.

Vice Mayor Phil Conklin suggested the developer employ a Community Facilities District, or CFD, such as the one Quail Creek used to pay for a park, to generate money from future home buyers, before he voted yes.

Mayor Lynne Skelton and others said they hoped that talks could continue in the future with the developer over possibilities for expanding the park.

Town Parks Director Debbie Summers said the town should not commit to building the park expansion within 60 months, which was a condition of the Rancho Sahuarita land donation proposal, because the town expects to face severe budget problems within the next two to four years and the expansion costs have not gone through the town’s capital budgeting process.

Expenses for larger park

Assistant Town Manager Larry Dobrosky said the capital cost of developing the larger park would be $7 million, or about double the $3.5 million estimated by Sharpe & Associates, the developer of Rancho Sahuarita.

Dobrosky ticked off items he said were not included in the lower figure, such as sewer and water lines and lights, and he also said the town has discovered while developing other parks that the average parks development cost is $229,000 per acre, much higher than was expected.

Chalfant said that was the first time he heard the $7 million number and that he felt Rancho Sahuarita had experience developing parks at a much lower cost within their master-planned community.

He handed council members a memo outlining objections to the town staff analysis of the issue, which said the town plans will create a dam in the flood plain of the Santa Cruz River and cause downstream problems.

Current plans are for the park to include a regulation 225-by-360-foot soccer field and a junior baseball field, one with 320-foot foul lines and a 385-foot center field fence, a size that would accommodate players ages 13 to 18.

The park will be south of the town wastewater treatment plant east of Rancho Sahuarita Boulevard.

The baseball field also can be overlaid with two small practice soccer fields with dimensions of 165 by 300 feet.

Summers said the town hopes to get the fields ready for play by August 2008.

She noted that five of the seven Parks and Recreation commissioners are from Rancho Sahuarita,

pfranchine@sahuaritasun.com | 547-9738