The final hearing on Houghton Reserve before Mayor and Council has been scheduled for 5:30 PM on 07 July 2020. This meeting has been long delayed due to COVID-19 and is now a call in meeting. The agenda for the meeting is published here:
https://tucsonaz.onbaseonline.com/1801AgendaOnline/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=1411&doctype=1
Instructions for joining the meeting are included at the top of the agenda. The final, signed copy of our acceptance letter and the final Preliminary Development Plan are linked below:
Final Acceptance Letter
Final PDP
06 March 2020
We met, again, with the developer's team and Councilman Cunningham on 2 March. In that meeting, Keri Silvyn presented a new Preliminary Development Plan and conditions that they could accept which were intended to address the concerns we expressed at the 17 February meeting. After some discussions, a few more edit/concerns were addressed and the developer's team took the action to compile a revised PDP map and conditions that reflect the agreements we discussed in the meeting. We agreed that with all these changes, we would accept the plan and withdraw our letters of protest. We did not get everything we originally set out to achieve, but this agreement is the best we believe we can get. Our real bargaining strength after the zoning examiner's hearing has been that our councilman felt that our concerns (demands) were reasonable and achievable. He now feels that the deal we have on the table is as good as it is going to get, and he expects us to accept it. The minutes of this meeting are posted in the minutes tab of this web site under Houghton Reserve Development Committee Minutes; 2020-03-02 (with Ward 2). The new documents and a suggested letter of acceptance is available to read here:
03062020 PDP
03062020 Conditions
03062020 Acceptance Letter
17 February 2020
The Zoning Examiner's Final report with attachments is available at the following link:
Zoning Examiner Final Report
The final document contains the Zoning Examiner's judgement, the list of conditions attached to the Houghton Reserve Proposal, the letter challenging the findings in the draft report, and the answer to that challenge written by the Zoning Examiner. The short story is that the challenge didn't accomplish anything.
The combined High 40 and Silverado Hills Block 3 neighborhood group met with Councilman Cunningham on 29 January and again on 13 February. Minutes of those meetings are posted on the "Minutes" page of the High 40 web page. In the meeting on the 13th, the developer showed a new Preliminary Development Plan (PDP) that reduced the total number of homes from 243 to 236 and increased the buffer between High 40 and the new homes to 80 feet. This PDP was not fully vetted in their circles, however, so they did not release a copy of it to us. Another meeting is being planned before the Mayor and Council hearing which is tentatively scheduled for 17 March.
23 January 2020
The Zoning Examiner has sent out his draft report following the public hearing and it was a disappointment for us. He recommended approval of the Houghton Reserve project as submitted. We met with Quentin Bryson and some people from Silverado Block 3 at the Stickley's house Tuesday evening 21 January to discuss our next steps. Quentin B. has a great deal of experience in these rezoning processes and he gave us some pointers on what to say and how to say it when we meet with our city Councilman, Paul Cunningham. Minutes of the meeting will be posted in the Minutes tab after Monday 27 January. The full text of the Zoning Examiner's draft report is here:
Zoning Examiner Draft
The only good news is that the emergency access through to 5th Street has now been removed from the plan.
10 January 2019
The Rezoning Hearing was last night, 9 January 2019. Roughly 30 people from High 40 attended, which we feel was a good turnout. Don Hunt presented the subcommittee's PowerPoint show listing the 6 most important problems with the development. 8 other people from High 40 also spoke. It will be 1 to 3 weeks before we know what the zoning examiner's recommendation is. We now have the result of the protest letter from the Planning and Development Services Department. This is a link to the document:
Protest letter results
7 January 2019
We had a rehearsal at the Hunt house on Saturday, 4 January to go over what we wanted to say to the zoning examiner at the hearing this coming Thursday, 9 January at 6:00 in the Mayor and Council Chambers down town. Our plan has evolved now to have one person present the HOA's opposition with a PowerPoint presentation and then follow that with individuals making their own statements. That presentation is available as a PDF file with one page per slide and a script under each one here:
High 40 Zoning Presentation Notes.PDF
If you would rather look at the actual PowerPoint file, you can see it here:
High 40 Zoning PowerPoint
There is a whole section on the things contained the the Planning and Development Services Staff Report that we are not happy about. You may want to see that report for yourself. This is a link:
PDS Staff Report
Naturally, there are also several references to the Houghton East Neighborhood Plan (HENP) which is a document that attempts to help regulate development in our area. Here is a link to that document:
HENP
1 January 2019
The hearing was rescheduled again to 9 January. Time of day and location will be the same as before.
28 November 2019
The hearing for the Houghton Reserve was rescheduled for 12 December. In preparation for the hearing, a group of us gathered at the Hunt's house on 13 Nov. to go through the statements we wanted to make before the Zoning Examiner. I don't have the text of statements made by several people but we have a set of core points we want to make. We expect the amount of time allowed for any one person to address the examiner to be limited to 3 minutes so I (Don Hunt) wrote a script that 7 people could present in succession without any one person going over the 3 minute limit. The text of that script is located here:
Script for Hearing
7 November 2019
You can send your letter concerning the proposed development to: John.Beall@tucsonaz.gov. John Beall is not the Zoning Examiner, but he is the guy who will deliver your letter to the right person.
The info packet provided by the director of Planning and Development Services to the Zoning Examiner has been posted on the PDSD web page: https://www.tucsonaz.gov/pdsd/public-hearing-agenda-materials-rezoning-special-exceptions-original-city-zoning. This is a direct link to the file in our library: Zoning Examiner's Packet
4 November 2019
The joint letter to the Zoning Examiner from the HOA has finished getting signatures and will be mailed today. A copy of the letter can be found here:
Joint Letter Signed
02 November 2019
The public hearing for the Zoning Examiner is set for 14 Nov. Please try to attend and let him know that you are not pleased with the proposal to increase the number of houses on the land next to High 40 from 30 homes to 243 homes.
This is a link to a PDF file of the letter notifying residents withing 300 feet of the development about the upcoming public hearing for the Zoning Examiner. It includes instructions for sending in a letter to oppose or support the development plan.
Notification
This link takes you to the map of the development filed with the city and dated 29 August 2019
Development Map
22 October 2019
The committee has drafted a letter to express the key changes needed to make the proposal acceptable to our neighborhood. This is not intended to discourage anyone from writing their own letter, but is an attempt to get these few points loudly placed before mayor and council with a united voice.:
Joint Letter to Mayor & Council
Meritage, or their legal team, has filed for their permit and change of zoning. The permit number to search for is: C9-19-18.
This is a link to Tucson's Planning and Development Services Department (PDSD) web site where all the relevant documents for the case can be viewed:
Official Documents Filed with PDSD
Once you are on the PDSD site, these are some of the most interesting documents:
- The map of the site is "Preliminary Development Plan_09SEP19.pdf" document Id 9622765.
- Verbal description is "1b Rezoning_project_narrative.pdf" document Id 9572572
- Traffic Analysis is "1p TIA HougtonReserveProperty 07-29-19.pdf" document Id 9574493
- Engineering Report prepared by the developer is "1n Houghton Reserve Site Analysis 1sr Sub.pdf" document Id 9572585
17 July 2019
Relevant documents can be found in the Development Library Folder.
Each of the layouts we have seen for the development are in the library, but here is a direct link to the most recent one: Latest Layout
06 July 2019
The High 40 is located within the Reyes Wash Watershed as shown on this map.
25 June 2019
The chart below is copied from the city of Tucson's web site. The development of the land south of 5th St. has not progressed to the second step, "Neighborhood Meeting" yet according to the law firm representing the developer. The current estimate for that to occur is late July. (The High 40 HOA has not been bypassed at a public meeting or hearing as we initially feared.) The High 40 Committee formed to address the proposed development is actively reaching out to discuss the plans for the development ahead of the neighborhood meeting that the developer must schedule in step 2 of the process shown below. We will keep you informed on our progress.
