BUCKEYE — The Buckeye Planning and Zoning Commission didn’t need a long time to ponder either of the development hearing items on its Tuesday agenda.
In fact, the board didn’t even need electricity.
Despite a power outage in the middle of Tuesday’s meeting, the board managed to conduct votes on both a site plan for an planned industrial park and a major community plan amendment for a 9,000-home section of Sun City Festival.
The power outage cut short the board’s live video broadcast of Tuesday’s meeting, ending it just before the apparent vote on the industrial park. The board was still able to complete the meeting.
The Merit Buckeye Industrial Park is on about 47 acres near the southeast corner of Turner and Baseline roads, west of State Route 85 and north of MC 85. An ownership group called Merit Partners submitted a site plan that calls for both a 414,000 square-foot industrial building and about 137,000 square feet of outdoor storage.
There was one phone call received in opposition to the project. There are rural homes, unincorporated county land zoned for rural housing and farming in the vicinity.
Buckeye planner Randy Proch said there are two Union Pacific rail spurs on the site.
“Those boxcars actually could get loaded in the building,” Proch said. “And the outdoor storage, there is room to shrink-wrap and weatherize everything.”
One board member asked how many people the center is likely to employ. Jeff Brust, speaking on behalf of Merit Partners, said he isn’t sure yet, as negotiations with yet-to-be-disclosed tenants are ongoing.
The 9,000-home section of Sun City Festival is known as North Star Ranch. Larry Yount of Scottsdale, doing business as Festival North LLC, is the applicant owner.
That development will create a third large section of the isolated Sun City Festival part of Buckeye. North Star Ranch will be built on land north of both of the existing association communities of Festival, starting north of a canal and Beardsley Parkway.
Jason W. Brooks is a News editor for the Daily Independent and the Chandler Independent.
He covers the Chandler area for both yourvalley.net and the monthly print edition while writing for and assisting in the production of the Daily Independent.
Brooks is a well-traveled journalist who has documented life in small American communities in nearly all U.S. time zones.
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and in suburban Los Angeles, he has covered community news in California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and northern Arizona.
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