The term “heart of Sedona” is a nebulous expression that’s probably used more commonly than any other around town.
There are at least two businesses and two defunct podcasts that use the term in their name. Galleries and restaurants refer to their location as the “heart of Sedona” whether they are in Uptown or on the far reaches of West Sedona.
Short-term vacation rentals from the far reaches of Pine Valley in the Village of Oak Creek to the industrial park down Sunset Drive are simultaneously in the “heart of Sedona,” likely because tourists don’t have access to local maps or don’t really care exactly where they stay.
Good thing human anatomy isn’t designed like our geography.
But the “heart of Sedona,” as most residents understood it in the early 2000s, related to a U-shaped parcel near the intersection of Brewer and Ranger roads. It could legitimately claim to be Sedona’s geographic heart, or historical heart, considering it was adjacent to the location of Sedona’s first general store and near the Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock Ranger Station, ranger’s house and barn, built in 1917.
Before State Route 179 circumvented the location by cutting up the bluff to the east of Brewer Road, all traffic in Sedona heading from what is now West Sedona or Uptown passed through that intersection down State Route 179.
For nearly 90 years the Red Rock Ranger Station was the hub of U.S. Forest Service administration in the Sedona area, until the USFS decided to move in 2005. The Coconino National Forest built its new station south of the Village of Oak Creek along State Route 179 where it would be more easily accessible to visitors coming north from Interstate 17 before they really enter red rock country.
The transition meant a 14.174-acre parcel of prime real estate in the center of Sedona — adjacent to Los Abrigados Resort and the Tlaquepaque shopping plaza — was on the auction block.
Unlike a normal bidding process for land when one private owner sells to another more or less in a private transaction, the bidding process was a public affair. Entrepreneurs hoped to build the next big resort or shopping center, residents pooled resources to save the site and ILX Resorts — the parent company that owned Los Abrigados — and the city of Sedona vied in the final days.
In the end, a Chandler real estate investor, James Anthony Bruno, who reportedly had no ties to Sedona and knew little about the parcel, jumped in and bought it in the final days of the auction. Bruno and ILX formed ILX-Bruno LLC to develop and manage the parcel, but it never amounted to anything.
It basically served as an overflow parking area for events at Tlaquepaque, a purpose it still fulfills.
After the Great Recession, ILX went bankrupt, and Diamond Resorts, a multinational timeshare company, snatched up all of ILX’s 10 resort properties in 2010, including the Heart of Sedona and additional acreage in Bullhead City and 2.1 acres in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico.
Diamond Resorts was roughly in the same predicament as ILX — eager to somehow develop the land but unwilling to demolish the historic buildings on the property. The city of Sedona quietly purchased the parcel in 2014.
That’s where the project stalled. After a hard-fought process lasting nearly a decade, the city finally acquired the land it lost out on in 2005 but has yet to do anything with it.
The city has maintained the buildings and drafted a plan to turn the area into a park, but until something is put down, it’s merely a parking lot with some old buildings.
The city has an annual surplus of cash and financial reserves, yet hasn’t applied any of these funds to fully transform this “Heart of Parking” into a working city park facility.
Rather than mess around with promoting a single trash-hauler, funding parking garage studies or community focus area planning debates, the city should use its time and effort creating a park on land it owns with money it has.
As it sits idle, it is a giant, literal metaphor for the city’s inability to get anything accomplished.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
