We commend the Sedona City Council for approving the Sunset Community Focus Area.
With all council’s debates on minor issues like trash cans or developments outside the city limits or resolutions about national issues that give us the warm fuzzies but do nothing substantial, it’s refreshing that council can vote on a major development that could reshape even a small part of the city over the long-term, help diversify economy from one almost 100% dependent on tourism and provide a space where future residents could work and live without having to travel across town.
Sedona still builds under the model most cities do since the dawn of automobile: Workers truck back and forth daily from surrounding fields of single-story homes to commercial and industrial workplaces concentrated in certain zones.
The Sunset CFA upends that model with a new one that aims to combine residential spaces with commercial and light industrial ones so that residents can walk a short distance to work and enjoy recreational activities during their off hours.
The CFA would only affect a small part of the city — between Sunset and Shelby drives on the far southern end of their connection, which is already zoned light industrial. The CFA permits combining housing in this area so that it is not just an area workers drive to but one where they can live in too.
The simplest benefit to Sedona residents at large is that any type of zoning or development that encourages residents to live within walking distance of their employer means fewer cars on Sedona’s roads. The long-term benefits could be that the CFA serves a model for how to move forward.
Sedona has toyed with combination work/live spaces in a few parts of the city: Commercial space on the ground floor and apartments above. These rare units could be more common on State Route 89A if the CFA proves they can attract residents, prove profitable to property owners and diversify our economy in the process.
Council debated the height limits at length. The CFA permits buildings up to 45 feet, which could be three or four stories depending on how they’re built. A builder in 2020 may be more than happy with a 45-foot-tall building limit. Any builder who wants to build something taller would have go before both the Planning & Zoning Commission and City Council for approval.
The traditional attitude of two bodies would likely preclude any building above that height, so there really was no reason for this council to try and legislate prohibitions now without a building proposal on the table. A builder could go before council in 2030 wanting to build an emissionless work/live building that produces magical puppies and rainbows but only in a building that’s at minimum 50 feet tall. Let that council and P&Z commission decide then if such a building is the right fit for Sedona rather than debate a nebulous issue now with no proposals on the table.
The vote was unsurprisingly split 4-3 with height the sticking point.
Councilman Bill Chisholm wanted more information before he felt comfortable voting, but, at this point, after months and months of research, exactly how much more information would be satisfactory or even informative? Move on and start discussing Sedona’s traffic problems.
Councilman John Currivan suggested taking a public poll about the height. Our council members were elected to make votes on issues so residents don’t have to week after week. If council doesn’t want to do what we elect them to, let’s scrap this whole representative democracy thing and have the whole city vote on every issue like Greeks did in ancient Athens.
Besides, what would be the point of a citywide poll? Residents were presented with a comprehensive poll about traffic and we demanded neighborhood road connections so drivers could avoid using State Route 89A to go from one adjacent neighborhood to the next one over.
What did council do with that extensive and thorough and expensive public poll? It cowered in fear as a tiny handful of NIMBYs complained and killed that improvement in the Sedona in Motion plan.
In all probability, if residents said they were OK with four-story buildings halfway across the city that could boost affordable housing options and diversify the economy, timid council members would find ways to deny them because of a single neighbor’s complaint, no matter how overwhelmingly residents are in favor.
Council members should just vote the way they were going to anyway without the confirmation bias of a poll to “validate” one’s vote and save taxpayer money.
Now that this issue is settled, can we get council members to start voting on what roads to build right away to lessen our traffic congestion?
— Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
