Two Sedona Community Focus Areas may have big changes coming up after the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission recommended the removal of lodging references and the replacement of mixed-use development references for the areas’ future building projects at their July 5 meeting.
The city created Western Gateway and Soldier Pass CFAs in 2016 after many months of deliberation, public hearings and work sessions.
“The community really feels the [STR] impacts and is quite vocal about it,” Community Development Director Jess McNeely said. “And the staff has been given some direction to be responsive to the impacts that the community has felt. So the community and council requested actions to address these changing circumstances within our planning documents. Planning documents are, by design, intended to be flexible. They can be amended. Other CFAs have been amended before when you previously amended them in response to community needs.”
Although the CFAs don’t grant zoning or entitlements to any potential developers, it’s the city’s planning policy documents that communicate what the community wishes to see in those areas. And later in the zoning process, the city requires that all projects be zoned to be consistent with the Community Plan and its CFAs.
“We’re not closing down on lodging within Sedona by making these changes,” P&Z Vice Chairwoman Charlotte Hosseini reiterated.
The mixed-use development, different than the mixed-use zoning district, is a request for the specific CFAs to have more variety in their developments than just commercial or lodging uses, specifically STRs or hotels. The discussion to change the intention of the CFAs comes from the city’s desire to bring in residential developers, rather than commercial and lodging developers.
But, with both CFAs having current projects in work with the city to develop resort-style projects, the owners and developers are raising concerns that this change could redirect their plans.
The one project in the Soldier Pass area has been ongoing for around six years. The Baney Corporation plans to build a 122-room resort including 40 multi-family units, of which 28 are workforce housing. This empty lot is located south of State Route 89A where Soldier Pass Road terminates.
The Western Gateway’s defunct Sedona Cultural Park was also widely discussed as South Dakota owner Mike Tennyson proceeds with his potential sale to Truecraft Residential to build 674 residential units, along with some commercial spaces planned into it.
“These developers worked in good faith, based on the plans that are currently adopted to align with what is currently the most important priority of the city, which is housing inventory and affordable housing. And we have two projects that are doing that,” said attorney and representative for Truecraft Residential and the Baney Corporation Benjamin Tate. “It would be an enormous disservice to the process that both of these CFAs went through to be adopted, to be drafted, to be revised before they ultimately became part of the city’s long-range planning to bring through this amendment without any meaningful opportunity for community engagement or dialogue or discussion. And we’re simply asking this committee to provide the space for that to happen. This community loses nothing by allowing that opportunity to occur.”
The city gave notice and the opportunity to submit comments for property owners in the areas before the meeting. And according to city staff, the majority of the comments were in support of the proposed amendments.
But Tate believes the amendments to the CFAs that could potentially disrupt his client’s projects, should be further discussed with the community just as the original CFAs were discussed
The recommendation will continue to the city council at a future council meeting. The commission recommended the amendments with a 4-to-2 vote. Commissioners Sarah Wiehl and Charlotte Hosseini voted against it due to what they said was the rush into the recommendation and unfairness to the current developers in the areas.
“I support the amendment, and I support that this is what the community wants,” Wiehl said. “I just felt really uncomfortable with the rush in the process and not being able to confer with legal about it. I don’t feel like it’s thoroughly vetting out the process as we typically do with a CFA.”
