Last Thursday, Dec. 19, the Yavapai County Planning & Zoning Commission voted 5-4 to recommend denial of rezoning Spring Creek Ranch from residential to planned area development.
The 5-4 vote is by no means definitive nor the end of the story with the Spring Creek Ranch parcels. Many users on our social media pages opposed to the project are declaring victory and claiming that the rezoning was defeated. While we appreciate the passion of people getting involved in the civic process, this was merely a preliminary meeting and democracy is a far more complex creature than a single one-off vote.
First, the vote was only an odd number because Commissioner Mark Mumaw was absent. It would be impossible to definitively claim how Mumaw would have voted after a seven-hour meeting. His vote could have made the decision 6-4 or tied at 5-5. The commission is not required to break a tie; such a vote is simply sent to the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors as a split decision.
Second, even a decisive 10-0 defeat at the P&Z level does not kill a proposal or project outright as a commission’s vote is merely a recommendation for the supervisors. Eric and Lisa Borowsky, the developers who own the property, could decide to hedge their bets and continue to the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors meeting when they are scheduled on Wednesday, Jan. 15, hoping that a 5-4 commission vote could result in a 3-2 supervisor vote in their favor.
They could also hope that the close 5-4 vote shows that the commission and community is split and that a few concessions from the developers at the supervisors’ meeting could result in approval.
Third, while Spring Creek Ranch rezoning does have some similarities to El Rojo Grande, the major difference is in ownership. El Rojo Grande’s sale from the current owners to Equity Lifestyle Properties was contingent on achieving rezoning from Yavapai County.
When the P&Z Commission voted 9-0 against El Rojo Grande a year ago, the time and cost of resubmitting a proposal for parcels ELS did not own likely seemed like too much of a hassle and ELS pulled out of the deal a month later.
Conversely, the Borowskys own Spring Creek Ranch and have owned it for more than a decade-and-a-half. They have the time and resources to alter their plans and submit a more modest proposal with a better chance of getting approved.
Fourth, the parcels are destined for development. Unless a new owner promises to buy the land and donate it to the U.S. Forest Service or the state to be a state park, development is all but inevitable. A potential new owner could offer more money for the land than the owners will make developing it, but such purchases are highly improbable.
Fifth, the current proposal was the extreme of what was permissible, per request by the county, and not necessarily what the developers wanted to actually build.
Yavapai County officials wanted the Borowskys to provide the maximum number of units a rezoning could allow in their proposal in sort of a “worst-case” scenario, even if the Borowskys had no intention of ever meeting that maximum. With the 5-4 rejection, the Borowskys could pare down that density to more reasonable maximum numbers, which would still be more than the Borowskys plan to actually build, and gain approval.
Likewise, Arizona Department of Transportation wanted to know how fast buildout could happen — which the Borowskys gave as six to nine years — when it could actually take 20 years, just for the sake of road planning.
Sixth, if opponents of rezoning don’t want to buy the parcels but instead want to fight every rezoning effort, there is only a limited amount of times such a battle can be won. P&Z commissioners and supervisors aim to keep growth and development reasonable and controlled, not to ban it outright. Developers take what commissioners and supervisors suggest and retool their proposals to meet their expectations.
Should the Borowskys choose to pull their proposal and redraft it, these suggestions become the new guidelines. It would be hard for an official to vote against a project if the developers made the adjustments they said would earn them their vote.
Seventh, even if the current owners don’t get approval for rezoning, they can still split the parcels as-is and build homes right away, should they choose.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
