On Sept. 14, the Cottonwood City Council and Planning & Zoning Commission heard from Bruce Barrett, a representative of a Utah-based developer about a 741-acre development on Arizona State Trust land in Cottonwood.

The presentation was a conceptual one, but perhaps the most “conceptual” of all conceptual plans, something more akin to what a so-called “developer” would sketch on a bar napkin at closing time to convince you to pay his night’s bar tab.

The Verde Valley needs workforce housing. Sedona seems opposed to any, relying on Cottonwood instead. Yet the water amenities in the concept include a giant wave pool, a winding man-made lake, a lazy river and other wet things more akin to damp Florida than dry Northern Arizona. Barrett said at the work session, “We’d love to be on this property, but unless we’re able to put in these water features, we just wouldn’t do it.”

Excellent. “This is dumb. No.” Disaster averted.

We could end the editorial here, but we should probably explain the fatal flaws. According to the plan, water will come from rainwater collection and buying water rights from those locals who have them but don’t use them.

If we didn’t live in the desert, it would be lovely to have a surf park or a giant wave pool. The fact one was included should hint at how tone-deaf this was.

If we didn’t live in the desert, building a lake with water collected from a 741-acre parcel would be amazing. If that was possible, we would have natural lakes everywhere. But we live in a desert and it doesn’t rain much. Water in giant open pits evaporates in a desert.

Cottonwood Utilities Director Tom Whitmer, a water expert, called the rainwater capture plan “rather ambitious,” perhaps because “insanely, knee-jerkingly absurd” isn’t polite. When asked, he said rainwater might be able to catch one-fifth what was proposed. Whitmer pointed out that the last two non-monsoons would have meant that the rainwater capture would have been near zero.

Financially, Barrett’s plan for construction is to “take the product” to potential buyers, sell it, then build the next phase. These purchases are refundable if people change their minds. They will. The problem with pay-as-you-go massive developments is that actual, real world people don’t want to live in half-complete developments, nor wait 20 years for the perks they were promised.

Time marches on. People change their minds and move elsewhere and want their money back. Costs increase. People die. Heirs aren’t as committed to paying for a project their parents funded but died before completion. For example, if 50 people pool $1 million each and a builder pays for a $30 million building, then 25 want their 100% of their money back, that’s called bankruptcy. Very few people will commit to that long-term goal with such huge risk of failure and a 20-year time frame, especially the kind of fiscally wise folks with $1 million to burn.

Ergo, no city should get into bed with a developer that doesn’t already have hundreds of millions in capital funds for a project of this scale. Giving the green light to a flyby-night outfit out of Utah is even more foolhardy.

There are un-built proposals tied to Barrett in Bear Lake County, Idaho, and Heber City, Utah, that were crushed by public officials due to a lack of water rights, lack of water and outright bad planning. Barrett said his firm put together a proposal for El Rojo Grande ranch but “couldn’t make that work with the land owner.” Barrett said the company did a “pretty big deal with Verde Valley School and couldn’t make that one work” either. Un-built projects aren’t deals, they are failures.

Now the developer now wants to try a $1 billion project in the Verde Valley? Always fail upwards.

Barrett added that to be feasible, this resort has to “be better than any resort in Sedona,” which is a tough ask. Sedona resorts have natural red rocks and have spent decades building up their magic and mystique. Cottonwood would have to build an attraction from scratch and use precious water for aesthetic purposes. Barrett’s company’s plan is instead dump rainwater in holes, spend 20 years getting future buyers to fund it and hope that as phase three is under construction, buyers in phase one and half-completed phase two don’t mind gazing across the resort grounds at the bulldozers and dirt piles next to the wave pool, empty because there was a bad monsoon last summer.

Cottonwood City Councilwoman Debbie Wilden correctly pointed out this would be an eyesore “in more ways than one.” We concur. The land should stay undeveloped. As land prices skyrocket, we can expect more absurd projects like this to target Sedona and other Verde Valley towns hoping to cash in. We must project our lands and water from both speculation and stupidity.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor