By Roland Murphy for AZBEX – BEXclusive
The approval by Casa Grande City Council last month of General Plan amendments and rezoning requests for a pair of properties will make more than 350 acres of new space available for future industrial development.
In its Feb. 18 meeting, the Council approved a minor General Plan amendment and rezoning for 283 acres at the SEC of Bianco and Clayton roads and two minor General Plan amendments and a rezoning for parcels at the SEC of Bianco and Illinois Roads.
Council had approved annexation requests for the Clayton property earlier in February.
Clayton Industrial
The larger of the two requests is known as Clayton Industrial. Landowners Vernon, Brynn and Conway Barnes requested a rezoning of 283 gross acres from its previous General Rural Pinal County designation to I-2 General Industrial in Casa Grande. They also requested a minor General Plan amendment to reclassify the site from a Phase 2 Growth Accommodation Area to a Phase 1.
The 283 acres are part of a 525-acre annexation approved last month. The rest of the site is under separate ownership and was not included in the rezoning request.
According to the submitted narrative, “The Property is currently used for agricultural purposes with multiple large lot single-family rural residential homes and barns/agricultural structures present on the Property. It is bound by single-family rural residential and agricultural properties to the north, agricultural land to the south, Bianco Road to the west, and Ethington Road to the east. Multiple irrigation lines servicing the agricultural use of the Property, and existing overhead power lines are present on the Property. There are no other encumbrances associated with the Site. The Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway/Union Pacific Railroad is located approximately 1.7 miles to the north and Gila Bend Highway is located approximately 0.75 miles to the south.”
The surrounding land uses are agricultural, undeveloped or single-family rural residential.
In justifying the request, the owners state, “The Project is well located for industrial use, lying within western Pinal County’s Arizona Innovation & Technology Corridor and in close proximity of two existing interstate highways, I-10 and I-8, and future I-11, the UPRR rail line and is served by a general aviation airport.”
There are currently no development plans in place for the property, and future developers will have to submit a major site plan with proposed land uses, improvements and development standards for City review and approval.
Bianco Industrial
The requests for the Bianco Industrial site, owned by Vernon Barnes and Aaron Williams, are more complicated but have the same end result as the Clayton site.
There were three requests associated with the site. The first changes the land use from a Phase 2 Growth Area to a Phase I Growth Area under the General Plan. The second changes the land use category from Rural to Manufacturing and Industry for 10 acres of the roughly 80-acre site, and the third requests a rezoning of 66 acres from Pinal County’s General Rural zoning to Casa Grande’s I-2 General Industrial for 66 acres intended for future industrial use.
Those requests were recommended for approval by the Casa Grande Planning and Zoning Commission in January.
In the Council meeting, the annexation and the rezoning of the 66 acres were approved on the consent agenda.
The applicants explained the request to rezone the 10-acre portion by saying, “The Project is well located for industrial use, lying within western Pinal County’s Arizona Innovation & Technology Corridor and having access to major transportation routes including the Gila Bend Highway/AZ-84, Interstate-8, and Interstate-10 which offer connectivity to industrial uses and customers across the country. The Interstate-11 selected corridor alignment lies approximately 2.6 miles west of the Project and if constructed, may serve to connect North America as part of the planned CANAMEX Corridor. The City of Casa Grande is centrally located between the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas and has been attracting many new employment-generating industrial uses from the burgeoning industrial activity in each, particularly support industries for the TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) chip manufacturing facility under construction in Phoenix. This area offers available infrastructure necessary to facilitate industrial development including natural gas, electric power, and transportation access.”
All the surrounding land uses are agricultural.
As with the Clayton requests, there are no immediate development plans, and any future developments will have to go through the standard site plan submittal, review and approval processes.
Both sets of requests were prepared and represented by Colliers Engineering & Design (formerly HILGARTWILSON).