Monster? Really?

Did you see the article in the East Valley Tribune over the weekend entitled "Growth Monster Keeps on Moving in Gilbert"? Front page, and everything. The editors took the title from a quote by Town Manager George Pettit, who said, “from some people’s perspective, this is their property and they lived there 20 years. They thought they were running ahead of the growth monster, and it wouldn’t catch them.” I'm pretty sure that George was speaking tongue-in-cheek, but the line was too good for a copy editor to pass up.

The gist of the article has to do with some folks who live at Higley Ranches, and their displeasure at losing their rural lifestyle. It's too long to copy the whole thing, but here is a sample:

The Higley Ranches area is just one of the rural neighborhoods along Gilbert’s leg of the Santan Freeway that is seeing life change as commercial development arrives and begins to transition what was once a highly rural region into what is anticipated to become the economic core of Gilbert. And that has created a divide between rural and urban life.

“I fully believe (Gilbert officials) would prefer that everybody move, and it turn into another quarter- or fifth-acre lots for suburbanites,” Higley Ranches resident Jim Torgeson said. “The whole plan, they counted on victimizing the county islands, and they did.”

Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman said that while some homeowners along the freeway have sold their homes to developers eager to bring offices and retail to prime real estate, the town itself can’t take the homes and replace them with businesses or smaller home lots.

“We haven’t zoned anybody’s house and turned it into a Wal-Mart,” he said.

But the growth is bringing so much new business and traffic to a once quiet region that it has caused some newly annexed residents so much angst that they’ve created a political action committee called Manage Commercial Density.

The group is collecting signatures to get a referendum on a ballot that would ask voters to overturn the zoning of a shopping center and commercial lot on land adjacent to their homes, at Germann and Greenfield roads.

“We moved here after the freeway was coming in, but we had no idea it would be every corner in Gilbert that was going to be turned into commercial,” said Mike Webb, a group member. “It just seems the city won’t stop.”

It is impossible for me to read statements like these without shaking my head a little bit; the irony is so obvious. After the folks from Higley Ranches moved in (after the freeway was coming in), was the Welcome Mat supposed to be removed? I rather suspect that The Mister's forebears also had no idea that there would be commercial uses on every corner, nor houses on every cotton field, nor traffic on every road... It is the age-old dilemma: the allure of living in a great place invites growth, and when the newcomers show up, the firstcomers feel violated. I posted and posted on this nearly 2 years ago, and actually could keep posting on this every year until Gilbert is completely built out.

Here is the view from the east side of Higley Groves at Kenneth Lane looking out at the San Tans; you can see the grain tanks to the right:


When this field was green with alfalfa, this was a beautiful view; soon there will be houses sprouting up like corn (which actually blocks the view of the mountains). It might be tempting to resent the loss of the view. Of course, Higley Groves residents have only been here about 10 years, and the ground on which they reside was in cotton before that.

Here's another view from the same spot, only looking at the back of the shopping center and the Farm Bureau building:


Residents need groceries and gas and mail services and other things like that. And it helps if they can conveniently get in and out, say, if the facilities are on a corner. This is why corners become so valuable as commercial properties.

Our entire family has had to grapple with growth for several years. If you want to read some of the stories of our angst, I posted about it when beginning this blog, here and here. An outgrowth of that struggle is Morrison Ranch. Seriously. Growth is inevitable; our desire is to make it as pleasant as possible.

So for the folks who live at Cotton Lane and Kenneth, we plan to provide a pleasant view, even though it will no longer be an unobscured view of the San Tans. View Corridors are very important to us, as I wrote in another prior post:

A buzzword in our office is view corridors; that is, what do you see when you look from this or that direction? A view of the grain silos or the lake is a premier view, but that's not possible from every spot. What is possible is to keep the views open, or at least ending in green rather than walls. When you look down a street, usually the ending view will be a park of some sort, or at least a line of trees. The goal is to promote the open space that we have, and to soften the ends of streets with lush foliage instead of hammering the eyes with concrete walls, or even houses. When you take your next walk through Morrison Ranch, check out the view corridors, and you'll see what I mean.

We're doing our best to tame the "monster."