[ad_1]
The city of Phoenix filed a lawsuit March 28 in Maricopa County Superior Court accusing the city of Tempe of violating the contract that the city council approved for the proposed Tempe Recreation District.
Tempe Mayor Corey Woods and former Mayor Neil Giuliano said the lawsuit was “unfortunate.”
Giuliano is a Tempe Entertainment District supporter with experience in the Phoenix lawsuit. He said Tempe would never want to do anything that would compromise the value of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which employed more than 57,000 people in 2019, according to its website. Airports should also work with surrounding communities, Giuliano said.
“I’m not surprised that Phoenix filed a lawsuit; that’s how they handle things,” Giuliano said. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s a big place and the way they get attention is by filing a lawsuit. It’s baseless. It’s as baseless today as it was in the 90s when I was mayor, we knew it then , now we all know that going to court is a strategy.”
The proposed Tempe Entertainment District will feature a hotel, a new Arizona Coyotes arena, restaurants and other retail. The district, which was approved by the Tempe City Council in November 2022, will go through a citywide special election on May 16. The proposed area also includes as many as 1,200 multifamily housing units by the end of construction.
In the lawsuit, Phoenix cites a 1994 agreement between the two cities under which they created zones around specific noise contours in which no residential units could be built. The FAA developed contours based on new flight paths along the Salt River and approved them in 2019. The lawsuit says the Tempe Recreation District will lie entirely within the contour line of Priest Drive and Rio Salado Parkway on the west side of Tempe.
“This has nothing to do with the stadium,” Chad Markowski, director of aviation services for Sky Harbor, said in an email. “It’s about housing, and specifically, it’s about Tempe breaking a promise not to build where we promised to fly the plane.”
Neighboring cities should be able to reach an agreement without involving the courts, Woods said.
“I offered to meet and have a conversation to see if we could bring our two teams together, negotiate and work this out, because the reality is, you never want a situation to end in litigation,” Woods said in KTAR. interview.
The last communication between the two cities on the matter was on March 17, when Tempe City Manager Andrew Ching wrote to Phoenix City Manager Jeff Barton requesting more data related to the noise contour map established in 2019.
“Tempe cannot respond at this time without completing the contour map and obtaining all necessary public comment,” Ching wrote in the letter.
At an event Thursday, March 30 for Tempe Wins, a political action committee campaigning for the approval of the entertainment district, former Tempe Mayor Hugh Holman called the lawsuit a “fabric.”
“This is a political document, not a legal document,” Holman said.
In 2022, the Tempe City Council approved another mixed-use development, Modera Rio Salado, located within the noise contour. The development will include 319 residential units.
According to the complaint, the city of Phoenix is asking the Maricopa County Superior Court to declare Tempe in violation of the 1994 agreement and prevent the city from rezoning the land for “mixed use” within areas defined by noise contours. Proposition 302, one of three proposals on the ballot, determines the zoning classification of land for recreation district construction.
Senior reporter Alex Wakefield contributed to reporting on this article.
Edited by Reagan Priest, Piper Hansen and Greta Forslund.
contact reporter sbrenna5@asu.edu and @shanebrennan36 on twitter.
like National Press Follow on Facebook @statepress on twitter.
Sean Brennanpolitical reporter
Shane Brennan is a political reporter for The National Press. He also works for Cronkite News and Blaze Radio.
Continue to support student journalism and donate Give National Press today.
[ad_2]
Source link