We commend the four members of the Sedona City Council — Councilwomen Melissa Dunn and Jessica Williamson and Councilmen Brian Fultz and Pete Furman — who voted in the majority on Tuesday, Sept. 24, to approve the Saddlerock Crossing development at Soldier Pass and State Route 89A.
A hotel, shopping plaza or business complex makes sense in the area, considering that it has been zoned commercial since long before Sedona was incorporated and is located along the main commercial strip of West Sedona at a busy intersection.
The site is the former location of the Biddle Outdoor Center and plant nursery and, prior to hosting that longtime business, was the location of a restaurant and bar under various names and owners, which predated the residency of most current Sedonans.
The purchase of the commercial property and the subsequent demolition of the Biddle Outdoor Center meant that commercial development was always in the cards. Property owners will build what they deem profitable on the properties they own, and so it is with Saddlerock Crossing, which will include a 100-room hotel. However, the benefit to residents is that the Baney family will also build 46 workforce apartments on the 6.4 acres.
We have stories and editorials going back nearly 30 years calling on the city to build more housing for our workers. Sedona is now short some 1,500 to 1,600 units to meet our housing need, most of which will never be built due to the high costs of land, high building costs and prohibitively expensive local regulations, low profit margins and the fact our city is encircled by U.S. Forest Service land onto which we cannot expand. Sedona still has the right under the Homestead Act of 1862 to acquire some forest land, and has the option of negotiating with the federal government to obtain land intended for public purposes, but it would take visionary leaders to spearhead such efforts.
Sedona needs all the workforce housing it can get, which readers and residents have said for years. The current council has yet to build any: A proposed project on Sunset Drive fell through, and another project on Shelby Drive has not yet broken ground, in spite of candidates’ assurances in the 2022 election that both these projects were just around the corner.
The Baneys also worked with neighbors to address concerns and altered the project based on their objections and recommendations, so they too should be applauded for adapting to the neighborhood’s reasonable concerns. Saddlerock Crossing’s workforce housing will be built by private dollars rather than taxpayer funds, which our community can now spend on other things.
It appears to be up to private developers and property owners to offer workforce housing units, as Sedona has seen a net loss of workforce housing units under the current City Council, which seems to do better building pavement, whether it’s the sidewalk on Dry Creek Road, a sidewalk under Oak Creek Bridge near Tlaquepaque, the minor realignment of State Route 89A at Forest Road in Uptown or the pickleball courts at Posse Grounds Park, which are effectively pavement with some nets — that required ripping out green grass on the 1,000-square-foot softball field.
Meanwhile, the Forest Road Extension and Uptown Parking Garage are two pavement projects that are ballooning in cost so much that by completion, they will be the two most expensive projects the city has paid for thus far this century, even more expensive than the purchase of the Sedona Cultural Park by the last council. The park may have workforce housing on it, someday, but it’s not likely to happen this decade.
Opponents of the development can argue that Sedona doesn’t need more hotels, but major land buyers and corporate entities would seem to disagree after spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on market studies and business plans, researching the feasibility and profitability of building and operating hotels in the Sedona area. Surely, if the hotel market were saturated, Sedona’s hotels would be closing and investors would not view Sedona as a location where a new hotel could turn a profit. If not a hotel, the other option would have been some sort of shopping plaza, but Sedona already has a plethora of those around the city, many of which have vacant units.
In the end, a commercial development on that property was inevitable. Residents can be thankful that the Baney family wanted to work with neighbors and add more workforce housing to soften the project’s effect on the neighborhood and offer something desperately needed that elected leaders have promised but failed to provide.
Council made the right decision for taxpayers, including the Sedona residents who won’t call the new buildings “46 housing units” but their “home.”
