PHOENIX — In addition to some business and commercial planning and zoning changes and approvals, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors also changed the way a few Valley roads will look with a some simple decisions at Wednesday’s meeting.
The board unanimously approved all 11 items on its planning and zoning consent agenda, including industrial sites, commercial rezones and three freeway billboard permit approvals.
Consent agendas often are approved by boards and councils without discussion. Occasionally, a supervisor has asked for a consent agenda item to be broken out for discussion, public input or for it to be removed from the agenda completely, but that didn’t happen Wednesday.
Owners of land at Apache Boulevard and Loop 202 in the Mesa area were granted a zoning amendment for digital billboards at the recommendation of the Maricopa County Planning and Zoning Commission.
Owners of land at 59th Avenue and Watkins Street in the Phoenix area and Mary Street and Gilbert Drive in the Tempe only needed special-use permits for digital billboards. Those permits were granted.
Last year, supervisors approved an code amendment allowing off-site advertising billboards on select highways.
A proposed business along Mesa’s Main Street, on a county island in the Mesa/Apache Junction area, was granted a rezone to C-3 with a plan of development. The proposed auto repair business is between Glenmar Road and Loop 202.
The owner of seven acres near the northwest corner of El Mirage Road and Southern Avenue, in the Avondale area, received a special-use permit for a cottage industry to accommodate the manufacture of water tanks for vehicles in a Rural-43 zone.
Envirotech Group received a zone change from with overlay from rural to industrial use for industrial buildings on about 12 acres in the Tonopah-Arlington Area.
Like many other items on Wednesday’s planning and zoning consent agenda, the rezoning received an 8-0 approval at a recent Maricopa County Planning and Zoning Commission meeting.
The owner of about 11 acres in the Mesa area, near the intersection of 222nd Street and Williams Field Road and Mesa Gateway Airport, received a permit for an RV and boat storage facility.
Another landowner received a major special-use permit amendment in a C-2 zoning district for the expansion of an existing marijuana establishment onto an adjacent parcel. This will include the sale of extracted product to third party, off-site licensed dispensaries on the adjacent parcel. That site is near Elliot Road and I-10 in the Phoenix area.
The owner of about 10 acres at Power and Riggs roads in the Queen Creek area received a commercial rezone to accommodate a RV, boat and self-storage facility.
There would have been one planning and zoning hearing item on the agenda. After the agenda was created, a rezoning request for a proposed 80-unit townhome development along Thunderbird Road, east of 75th Avenue on an island that Peoria could soon annex, has been postponed to Nov. 16 at staff’s and developer/owner Gregory Living Trust’s request.
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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