Chandler and developer Desert Viking will use an outside consultant to help hash out an agreement for a $300-million mixed-use project they say will change the face of the city’s downtown district.
The Chandler City Council voted unanimously to negotiate a development agreement with Desert Viking, which already owns large swaths of downtown property and is building San Marcos Commons, a 15-acre mixed-use project that will include luxury town homes, retail and office space. The city and Desert Viking plan to split the cost to hire the consultant, Ernst & Young.
City officials now expect to have a development agreement and master plan worked out by the end of the year. At this point, Desert Viking’s proposal includes 600 condominiums and apartments and a city museum on a combination of city-owned and Desert Viking land on the west side of Arizona Avenue, just south of Boston Street.
Both sides said the overall plan still needs work and could change, especially when an ongoing conference center feasibility study is concluded in November. Desert Viking president Niels Kreipke has said he wants to include a conference center in his plan.
Planners have outlined a timetable that calls for a rough project plan that will include financial analysis and overall land-use plan to be presented to the City Council by the end of the year.
That timeline also includes an update meeting with local stakeholders by the end of August. But some of those stakeholders said that’s not soon enough.
“We think that ought to happen by mid-July,” said Jim Patterson, former mayor and president of the Chandler Historical Society.
His group has been lobbying the city for years to build a local history museum and helped successfully pass two bond issues authorizing nearly $12 million for the facility.
Becky Jackson, president of the Chandler Chamber of Commerce, called the new timeline “aggressive, for city work.” She also urged city officials to hold a stakeholders’ meeting by mid-July.
City Manager Mark Pentz said Chandler will keep stakeholders informed of what’s happening. But he also warned that the process will need to move fast to have an agreement set in six months.
“If we get into a design-by-committee process, I think the likelihood of drawing this thing out beyond six months will certainly increase,” Pentz said.
Chris Markham, Tribune
