The city of Sedona held the first public meeting to hear residents’ ideas for developing the Sedona Cultural Park at the Sedona Posse Grounds Hub on Oct. 24, 23 months and two days after the Sedona City Council voted to purchase the site and promised extensive public outreach to determine the park’s future uses.

According to the city’s strategic communication plan for the Cultural Park master planning effort, the process “aims to develop a range of concepts for the community and city to evaluate and potentially adopt.” The planning procedure is being conducted by city consultant Dig Studio of Phoenix.

The meeting consisted of two identical sessions. Jay Hicks of Dig Studio said that about 80 people attended the afternoon session, roughly twice the number he would expect at that type of meeting, and estimated that another 15 to 20 could be expected at the evening session.

The preliminary results indicate Sedonans want fewer than 200 housing units, an event venue and a recreation center as part of the Cultural Park buildout.

Charrettes

The first half of each session involved attendees being asked to rank their preferences for nine types of infrastructure and five types of uses for that infrastructure on charrette boards from first preference to fifth preference. The infrastructure options were small public spaces, such as playgrounds or community gardens; community parks or plazas; an entertainment venue; singlefamily housing; “missing middle” housing, which was not clearly defined;condominiums and apartments; shops and restaurants; a community center; and a recreation center with pool. Use options were art events; movies and theatre; music and food; “healthy community” events, such as a community garden or tai chi; and undefined “family-centered” programs.

Apartments led the infrastructure voting, with 29 first-preference votes, followed by an event venue with 18, a recreation center with 14 and community parks with eight. In second-preference votes, a recreation center led with 19 votes, followed by apartments with 11, a community park with 10 and an event venue with seven.

Arts uses received eight first-preference votes, with music and food and “healthy community” programs each receiving four votes.

Scoring the preliminary count of preference votes using the Borda method — five points for a first preference, four for a second and so forth — produces scores of:

• Apartments: 233
• Recreation center: 175
• Event venue: 150
• Community park or plaza: 134
• Small public spaces: 111
• “Missing middle”: 107
• Community center: 98
• Single-family homes: 82
• Shops and restaurants: 75

For the use options, the resulting scores would be:

• Healthy community: 154
• Art: 101
• Music and food: 69
• Movies and theatre: 62
• Family programs: 38

Mapping Exercise

The second half of each session consisted of a bubble mapping exercise that asked attendees to place adhesive cutouts, representing various uses to scale, on a map of the Cultural Park, allowing residents to create their own rough master plans for the space. Three categories of options were offered:

• Public spaces: Performance venues of 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 seats; a community park; a city plaza, “a large green and landscaped area available for civic purposes”; a community garden; a playground; and large and small dog parks. The option for the 5,000- seat venue also described it as requiring 15 acres and 1,250 parking spaces. The existing 5,350-seat Georgia Frontiere Pavilion venue occupies about five acres and was formerly served with 925 parking spaces.
• Commercial and service: A recreation center with pool, a community center, a grocery store and restaurants and shops.
• Housing: Duplexes and quadraplexes organized in 15-unit or 30- unit groups, townhomes in 25- or 50-unit groups, cottages in 20- or 35-unit clusters, 70- or 120-unit apartment complexes and 300- and 360-unit apartment complexes with parking structures.

Eighty-two attendees completed maps showing their preferred uses for the site. Participants were able to include multiple instances of a single use on their maps. Attendees were discouraged from placing items in a shaded area of the map immediately adjacent to State Route 89A that was described as a “viewshed area,” with the result that only three maps made use of that space.

Among public space options, a community park was the most popular element, with 51 inclusions, followed by a community garden with 47 inclusions and an event venue with 42 mentions. The three options offered for an event venue at different scales revealed a split in community views: While half of attendees wanted to see a performance venue incorporated into the plan, 21 voted for a 1,000-seat venue and 14 for a 5,000-seat venue, with seven participants opting for the 2,000-seat intermediate option. The venue was followed in popularity by a city plaza with 33 inclusions and a playground with 28 inclusions.

As part of the commercial and service component of the exercise, a community center was included 34 times, and a recreation center 26 times. A grocery store received 15 votes. The city of Sedona has four major grocery stores serving residents and tourists — Bashas’, Safeway, Natural Grocers and Whole Foods — with an additional store, Clark’s Market, in the Village of Oak Creek.

Players were able to choose from two size options for commercial space equal either to three restaurants and six shops or one restaurant and two shops; both scale options were used equally often, on 31 and 30 occasions, though not by all participants.

The 25-unit townhome cluster was the most popular housing option, with 31 inclusions on the maps, followed by the 70-unit apartment complex with 26 inclusions and the 120-unit apartment complex with 19 inclusions.

While the 360-unit apartment complex was the least popular option, it was included nine times. On average, attendees proposed a total of 172 units as a suitable density for the 41-acre site.

Some participants also drew in additional options that hadn’t been included by the city’s consultants. Of these, a museum was the most-requested proposal, with six write-in votes, followed by four each for a senior living facility and a technology center or business park. Public overnight parking received two votes.

One attendee suggested a dog park surrounded by 790 apartments, while another suggested two restaurants, a park, three playgrounds and 955 housing units, and a third submitted a completely blank map with the comment, “Leave as is.” There was also a layout that proposed the entire space be used as a combination of community gardens and overnight parking.

Community Comments

• “No-car apartments — shared rides and bikes.”
• “There should be an art museum, a music/dance facility.”
• “Sedona values the visual arts but not the musical arts. We need a place outdoors to host some outdoor events that is bigger than Posse Grounds.”
• “The originally-planned art village that would include shops, museum, gallery, theatre needs to be there.”
• “Museums about past use of this space.”
• “How about another [Sedona] Jazz on the Rocks?”
• “Observatory and astronomy center to tie with the Sedona Dark Sky designation.”
• “No more housing. Improve mass transit.”
• “Workforce housing 60%, subsidized housing 40%.”
• “No more dog parks.”
• “Try to avoid a food desert; add grocery store.”
• “Community garden? That’s No. 1.”
• “I want to see you guys push back hard on Yavapai Community College. Their facility is way underutilized.”
• “Nature preserve; leave as is.”
• “A worker village like a national park for seasonal workers.”
• “Tiny house village.”
• “Expand farmers’ market.”
• “Consider a place for reserved group camping.”
• “Allotted space for horse stables, horseback riding.”
• “Hemp block or earthen structures.”
• “The 5,000-seat venue could be a multipurpose space that caters to all different community needs.”

Next Steps

An online survey on future uses for the Cultural Park was released the same day as the meeting at plansedona.com. Hicks said the survey would likely run through Saturday, Nov. 30, to obtain the maximum possible range of public opinion.

The draft schedule for the planning process indicates that the second public meeting, at which Dig Studio will present three alternative site plans for the Cultural Park, will likely take place the second weekend in December, at which time a second online preference survey will be released. In mid-February, there will be a third public meeting at which Dig representatives will present their final site plan.

The plan is expected to be sent to the Planning and Zoning Commission in January and March before being presented to council at sessions in March and May.