Page 10 - the NOISE May 2014

RAZING AFFORDABILITY IN FLAGSTAFF:
AS ARROWHEAD VILLAGERS SCRAMBLE FOR SECURITY,
CITY COUNCIL GRAPPLES WITH A LOOMING SOCIAL DILEMMA
STORY & PHOTOS BY KENDALL PERKINSON
On February 11 of this year, the public comment portion of Flagstaff ’s City Council meeting erupted in an outpouring of grievance that marked what is quickly becoming the most controversial social and legal issue in the city. The speakers were resi- dents of Arrowhead Village, a trailer park in the west side neighborhood of La Plaza Vie- ja, where Georgia-based Landmark Prop- erties plans to remove their mobile homes to build a 650-bed luxury student housing complex.
The frustrated, pleading testimony came after Landmark Properties hosted an open informational meeting with Arrowhead residents, who showed up to find out what- ever details they could about the fate of their homes. As the following City Council meet- ing made clear, they were quite unsatisfied with the results.
Resident Anna Maria Velasco Ortiz was first to the microphone. “It was a total waste of time. Landmark could not or would not answer the questions we had.” After her comments, a line of other long-term resi- dents of Arrowhead came forward, most of them speaking through a translator. Each echoed Ms. Ortiz’s sentiments that no real an- swers had been given, while many pleaded with council to consider what the demolition of Arrowhead Village would mean for their families. “This news affects not just us, but our children,” said one long-term resident.
City Council candidate Jim McCarthy also attended the meeting, and while he hasn’t taken a formal position on the topic, he agrees that Landmark could have done better at communicating with residents. “I don’t know if they were really prepared for the meeting. I did ask a couple of questions to company representatives and did not get answers that were well thought out.”
Mr. McCarthy says that the sheer quan- tity of people who showed up to Landmark’s open meeting reveals why the displacement of Arrowhead Village will be the hot-button
issue of the year. “There were a lot of people there. Hundreds of people. Most planning and zoning issues, nobody shows up. This thing is very controversial.” He says that the momentum to address the issue has been channeled into City Council meetings, a trend he expects to continue. “There are essentially people every week that stand up and talk about their concerns for this project, and there are a lot of people there. They’re going to fill up the room. I can see it com- ing. They come close when it isn’t even on the agenda.”
Arrowhead Village is comprised of 56 fam- ilies who own their mobile homes, but rent the lots on which they sit for about $285 per month plus utilities. Though City Council has no control over whether the owner of Ar- rowhead sells the property to Landmark, the construction of the student housing project requires rezoning of the property from “man- ufactured homes” to “highway commercial.” This means that two critical votes will be taken in the near future — one at a required public hearing for the Planning and Zoning Commission, and another at City Council. It is on this aspect of rezoning that opponents of the Landmark plan are focusing their at- tention and energy.
One of the project’s most vocal opponents is Friends of Flagstaff’s Future (F3), an orga- nization dedicated to “advocacy of policies supporting a livable community.” Director Moran Henn points out that the rezoning required for Landmark’s project makes the Arrowhead Village issue a public concern. “I think it’s very important to understand that this is not about private property rights. When a landowner asks for rezoning, that becomes a community issue.”
Mr. McCarthy, who served six years on Flagstaff’s Planning and Zoning Commission, agrees. “The property owner should be able to determine what he wants to do with his land. On the other hand, owning property
does not give you a right to do just anything. The role of the City is to weigh the rights of the property owner with its responsibil- ity to ensure the land uses [of high-density student housing and the surrounding neigh- borhood] are compatible.”
One of the first things planning and zon- ing commissions generally do when consid- ering rezoning proposals is to see if a neigh- borhood plan exists. Arrowhead sits in Flag- staff’s La Plaza Vieja, where the final draft of an official, 75-page neighborhood plan was completed in 2011 after more than three years of work. Unfortunately, one particular part of the plan seems to be generating as much confusion as clarity about what the community envisions for the area.
THE “TIER 3” QUESTION
La Plaza Vieja (“The Old Town”) is Flag- staff ’s original settlement, taking its name when a series of fires in 1883 forced the city’s train depot to move a half-mile east, to where it remains today. The new location was first dubbed “New Town,” but eventually adopted “Flagstaff.” La Plaza Vieja became a settling place for Mexican immigrants who worked on the railroad and in lumber mills, and has always had a strong presence of Mexican-American culture, a trend still evi- denced today by the almost exclusively La- tino families that occupy Arrowhead. La Pla- za Vieja’s neighborhood association, which is open to the public, views its official plan primarily as a way to preserve “a safe neigh- borhood which respects and preserves the cultural dignity” of the area.
Landmark’s representative, Joe Villasenor, maintains any discussion about rezoning should take into consideration the student housing project fits nicely with this official plan. “Everything we’re doing is in confor- mance with the La Plaza Vieja Neighborhood Plan. We’ve been looking at it and using it as a guide. That’s the really important piece that I think people are missing here.”
Mr. Villasenor seems to be referring to a section of the plan titled “Mobile Home Re- development,” which contains the following suggestions for the Arrowhead Village mo- bile home park:
Tier 1 – Install a sidewalk and street trees along Blackbird Roost
Tier 2 – Replace uninhabitable structures with habitable ones
Tier 3 – Complete redevelopment plan, but ONLY with residential relocation plan”
Laura Myers, the neighborhood associa- tion’s outreach director, says that Mr. Villase- nor is simply wrong. “What we were want- ing was another mobile home park, not a five-story, 650-bed student housing.” asked whether Landmark’s plan could be consid- ered to fit the “Tier 3” portion of the plan, she acknowledges that it may seem that way, but insists that this was not their intention. “Any sentence is up for interpretation. I can inter- pret any sentence one way and you another. But a new and up-to-date mobile home park is what we were talking about.”
To support her claim, she shows me a re- port from a 2008 “visioning session” during which the neighborhood plan was devel- oped. Under a heading titled “Prioritize Goals and Strategies,” one relevant item stands out:
“Upgrade mobile homes.” Ms. Myers also shows me a letter that is currently being dis- tributed by the neighborhood association to residents of La Plaza Vieja. It seems to make their stance on the issue very clear: “It is ex- tremely important that we band together as a neighborhood and let the City Council and the developer know that this project, as proposed, does not belong in La Plaza Vieja neighborhood!”
LIVING WITH NAU
NAU is not involved in the Landmark de- velopment deal directly, but it is arguably the school’s booming enrollment that is causing
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