I woke up this morning at the city-owned apartment complex at Posse Grounds, just east of West Sedona School.
The complex’s more than 200 units are exclusively rented by Sedona workers, and as such, will never be turned into short-term rentals, which is the reason why our family had to move here in the first place.
The new landlord at our long-term rental decided to convert the old house we lived in into a vacation rental. It’s not a “new” house. In photos on VBRO and Airbnb, it sure looks like one, but it has the temperamental toilets and a drafty spot in the den we got accustomed to. A tourist spending $300 a night? Caveat emptor.
We were loyal renters, but as a middle manager from California who sees the property as an investment, not a home, our landlord decided profits over people was the way to go.
But our new apartment complex is great: Our three kids can walk to West Sedona School in just a few minutes and once I get off work, my wife and I can take our kids right to Posse Grounds Park on foot in less than five minutes.
The views are amazing: Clouds over Wilson Mountain and the mouth of Oak Creek Canyon, the sunrises over Munds Mountain, watching the planes land at the Sedona Airport and spectacular sunsets.
Our family is so thankful to the Sedona City Council and city staff for having had the foresight to work with the developer to construct this complex exclusively for Sedona’s dedicated workforce, which has been so hard hit since the Great Recession that the probability of owning a house in the city where I work, even with a good job and benefits, is financially impossible. But the city made it work.
Then I woke up and realized the Sedona City Council did no such thing.
They took the most beautiful publicly-owned parcel within the city limits and built …
A parking lot …
For tourists …
Whenever we at Larson Newspapers post a photo of traffic on Facebook, we inevitably have some user who quotes the lyrics to Joni Mitchell’s 1970 song “Big Yellow Taxi.” Because every user thinks they’re being original — and we sometimes get the same quote two or three times — it annoys me to no end, but in this case, yes, Sedona literally paved paradise to put up a parking lot.
So the city of Sedona had an untouched parcel next to West Sedona School, the Sedona Community Pool and Posse Grounds Park — the largest piece of public land in the city — and instead of building apartments or housing units for Sedona’s workforce, which could have been the most desirable apartments in all of the Southwest, Sedona City Council, in its infinite wisdom built … a parking lot.
And they didn’t even build it so that residents and visitors could more easily access the aforementioned park or pool or school. Instead, the city ruined a scenic hilltop with a parking lot so that tourists could then leave that amazing location to travel 1.3 miles north to another location for their hike. The lot was built so that Sedona City Council members and city administrators didn’t have to hear phone call complaints from Soldier Pass residents about tourists parking on public streets and causing a nuisance.
The city could have worked with the U.S. Forest Service to increase the size of the Soldier Pass Trailhead parking lot — it currently has just 16 or so parking spots — or posted signage about other places to hike and hired a tow truck driver to tow every car that violated the parking rules.
Somehow, council and staff thought those ideas were too tough, and that ruining a perfect spot for workforce housing and subsequently creating a bus system to ferry tourists to the trailhead was more financially sound.
Parking lots are ugly and thus built in certain areas for a reason: Your car doesn’t care where it is. If you go hiking, or shopping, or attend a festival for three hours, your automobile does not take in the view and bask in the beauty of where it is. It doesn’t care if it’s in a parking garage or a dirt lot or in the shadow of a building; a car is a box of metal, plastics and rubber that uses refined dead dinosaur goo to move walking, talking meat from place to place. It cares not for the scenery.
This isn’t armchair quarterbacking: Our editorial of Nov. 30, 2018, “If council extorts in the name of housing crisis, then build affordable housing,” told council members about six specific city-owned parcels where they could build 602 to 1,605 total units, depending on height.
Zero built so far.
Sedona leaders are callously disregarding the working-class employees of restaurants, gas stations and retail shops by telling them a tourist’s Nissan Pathfinder is more valuable than a person; it is more beneficial to give land to a Chevy instead of housing a child; a Jeep Wrangler has more clout than a worker. So when council members claim they want more “workforce housing,” ask one and all why they flagrantly scorn workers who might live there.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
