Battle over Gateway begins

And so it begins... There is a battle brewing over Gateway and the potential to put residential in the northern part of area. This is a continuation of the fight lead by the old council to push for an alternative to the plan that the city paid over $860,000 for which included high-density housing within the freeway loop. Councilman Scott Somers is against the idea of housing in the area while new Mayor Scott Smith is more open to the idea.

The battle has spilled over to the opinion pages with Somers and the Tribune taking a position against the proposed housing. We'll see if the paper gives any of the people more willing to consider the housing an opportunity to respond.

There is a lot of interesting information over at the Mesa Gateway Strategic Development Plan including links to Alternative A and Alternative B. I have attempted to put together a little graphic that shows the housing difference between A and B:

Its kind of hard to see, but the light orange is supposed to be high density residential and the light blue is business park. So, basically, option B pulled out all of the residential and put in a bunch more business park. Three observations:

1. This residential is not directly in the flight path, and its certainly got to be a lot quieter than the people who are living in the dorms at ASU Poly.

2. Option B results in NO residential on the North side of the freeway. None. Its a couple square miles of business park with some industrial and retail with no one living nearby. No one will be around at night, no neighborhood watch keeping crime down, no one caring about the area because its their home.

3. What's the use of a big park in the middle of all of that if no one is living there? Do you think the employees are going to go out and play kickball at lunch?

I think that they need to figure out exactly what they want and take their time to make the decision. Besides, its not like if they approved the plans tomorrow, they would start building apartments out there overnight.