Sedona residents may have noticed recent activity at the old Chevron station located next to the “Y” roundabout at the intersection of State Routes 89A and 179 in Uptown, which the city of Sedona purchased from the Arizona Department of Transportation in fiscal year 2022.
The property carries a deed restriction mandating that it can only be used for transportation-related purposes. The city’s FY24 budget stated that it was acquired “with the intention of constructing a multi-model [sic] transit stop for buses, and perhaps an information and kiosk center for pedestrians and cyclists.”
Over the past year, discussion at Sedona City Council meetings have included proposals to use the building for a city tourism information center. The Sedona Chamber of Commerce runs the Uptown Visitor Center 1,300 feet to the north at Forest Road and State Route 89A; the city will fund 80% of the chamber’s visitor center in fiscal year 2025.
“We’ve had a lot of interest through council and citizens that it’s been an eyesore and to improve it, so we got extra funding this year to try to improve and beautify and use it,” Director of Public Works Kurt Harris said on June 12. “We’re going to put screen on the windows and try to make the building look less of a gas station, kind of hide it. We’re going to remove the old concrete and pavement, put [decomposed granite] in there, try to improve it aesthetically.”
“We’re going to relocate our traffic control assistants there and also put like a mini-police substation there,” Harris continued. “We don’t really have one up in Uptown, and then we have a plan to put police vehicles there to try to get more vehicles in compliance and not blocking the intersection … stopping at the yield sign, so we’re keeping the level of service of the Y roundabout functional by having a police presence there. And then once it does go into failure, we have a police presence to put barricades out there to direct traffic and have the police physically dictating traffic … We’re going to put cameras on the building so we can monitor the traffic roundabout, get our traffic counts from there. That’s our highest accident rate as well. If there’s an issue there, people can use that for evidence, for accidents so people can clear out the road, keep it moving, keep it functional.”
The traffic control assistants are currently stationed at the city building on South Brewer Road, while the Sedona Police Department has a substation in Sinagua Plaza that Harris said would be closed once the Y building is ready.
“It’s not proximal,” Harris said of the Sinagua location. “They can have more of a bike presence there from there, too, into Uptown, so it’s just going to give us a lot more variability so we can be more effective.”
Harris predicted that the renovations should be complete by the end of July. The initial budget was approximately $50,000 and the final cost of the upgrades will come to around $75,000.
“That includes upgrading the building, fixing the roof, adding the aesthetics, all that,” Harris said. “It’s really minimal for the potential benefit … We’re trying to move the needle where we want to go in trying to effectively use space that’s already ours, making it a benefit versus a deficit.”
