The Town of Marana has crossed the line n into Pinal County n and is now looking northward, possibly as far as Red Rock.

At its March 29 meeting, the town council voted to annex 440 acres along the east side of Interstate 10 north of the Pima-Pinal county line. Last week, at its April 3 meeting, the council approved a plan to develop the property as part of 1,780-acre project named Villages of Tortolita. The plan makes room 6,500 houses, town homes and apartments.

“We have a good relationship with Pinal County,” said Jim DeGrood, assistant town manager for community services.

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Expanding from 10 square miles with 1,500 people to 120 square miles with 30,000 people in three decades, Marana has been following development northwest of Tucson, along I-10.

“That’s why we’ve been in a dialogue with them for several years,” DeGrood said. “We’ve both seen that the issues that affect us are also affecting them.”

Although there’s no current interest on the part of developers in Red Rock to annex, DeGrood said it is part of a natural path for expansion.

“It’s the same for metropolitan Phoenix, which is expanding into Pinal County from the north,” he said. “That’s probably having a bigger impact on Pinal County right now.”

But he said it is a key link in the forecast development of the Sun Corridor, one of 10 areas of the country defined as a “megapolitan area” in which Tucson and Phoenix will merge, ultimately stretching from Prescott to Sierra Vista.

DeGrood said it is good policy for Marana to be planning ahead.

“Our key concern is sustainability,” he said adding I-10 can’t be Marana’s “main street.”

“We have a lot of open space with considerable tracts of available land, but we only have enough jobs for a third to half of our population,” he said.

If Marana is going to create enough jobs for everyone, “rather than putting them on the freeway,” DeGrood said, “we need to bring jobs here, and that means working with developers to encourage them to locate business along the corridor. As of now, it’s very attractive to build residential along the freeway, but it makes more sense for the community to develop business there. By working with the developers, we want to encourage them to do that.”

Also looking to the west, Mike Reuwsaat, town manager of Marana, said efforts are beginning to work with the state on how property surrounding Marana Regional Airport is developed, “however, nothing like this moves forward at a quick pace. They have procedures and so do we.”

Processes and priorities are being developed for the property.

“It is one of the more complex things we’ve done,” Reuwsaat said. “But, within the next 12 to 18 months, we should have something in place to move forward with.”

Philip S. Moore

Inside Tucson Business

Contact Philip S. Moore at pmoore@azbiz.com or at (520) 295-4238. E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com.

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