By Roland Murphy for AZBEX
As Scottsdale continues winding down its increasingly anti-multifamily development path, its latest flagship fight continues to heat up.
Axon Enterprise, Inc. one of the city’s largest employers, has proposed a 400KSF-plus corporate headquarters/manufacturing facility and a nearly 1.6MSF corporate campus on approximately 57 acres near Hayden Road and Mayo Blvd. in north Scottsdale. In addition to the headquarters facility, the plan calls for nearly 1,900 apartment and condominium units, five retail buildings of up to five floors each, another three-story retail building, a 435-room hotel and seven restaurants.
The campus investment is estimated at $1.3B and predicted to add approximately 5,000 new jobs. The 10-year economic impact is projected at $38B.
Despite resistance from some area residents and opposition groups, including the Stonebrook II HOA representing 174 nearby homeowners, the outgoing Scottsdale City Council last month approved requests for a General Plan amendment and rezoning to allow the plan to advance. The approval also included a development plan, a development agreement and an amended public infrastructure reimbursement agreement. Axon had made several revisions to the original plan to accommodate opponents’ major concerns, including reorienting the residential and hotel components to increase their separation from existing homes.
Vice Mayor Barry Graham and Councilmember Kathy Littlefield voted against the measure, which passed 5-2.
Scottsdale has, for years, been one of the most difficult jurisdictions for multifamily development approvals, in large part due to resident opposition to new apartments and a City Council that has, generally, echoed their views. (AZBEX; December 7, 2021)
In the November election, a new mayor was elected, and some new Councilmembers with even more strident anti-development views—which development opponents refer to as “resident-friendly”—were chosen.
Opposition Organizes, Faces Challenges
Shortly after the approval vote, Kathy Littlefield’s husband Bob, a frequent multifamily opponent and former member of the City Council, launched Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions. TAAAZE, a pun on Axon’s Taser law enforcement non-lethal weapon product system, has since undertaken a drive using both volunteers and paid workers to collect signatures on a petition calling for a referendum to overturn Council’s approval.
The deadline to turn in the petitions, which will require a minimum of 15,353 signatures from Scottsdale residents, is December 21st.
Petition collectors have been stationed at local supermarkets and other businesses and have reportedly been canvassing door-to-door as well. TAAAZE or an affiliate has even rented office space at 7702 E. Doubletree Ranch Road where residents can stop by to add their names to the petition. An inquiry to the property’s leasing manager asking about rents at the location was not answered by press time.
Issues arose almost immediately with some of the petition collectors. According to local news reports, Kentucky resident Brandon Brown was arrested on an unrelated charge after police were called when shoppers at an area Basha’s store reported he was behaving aggressively while trying to collect signatures.
A Nextdoor user posted a collector came to her door and told her the proposed campus will include an airfield when trying to persuade her to sign. The campus proposal has no such component.
The user concluded her post by saying, “The backers of the Referendum do not want apartments anywhere in the city. The estimated cost of paid signature collectors is $100K to $200K–who is paying? He (the signature collector) said you can go to the Secretary of State website to read the ENTIRE text of the referendum–I couldn’t find it there. They want you to quickly sign at your door. Decide to sign or not–just KNOW what you are signing and do not trust the spiel you hear.”
Unanswered Funding Questions
Who is paying is a question that has come up in multiple news reports and social media posts since TAAAZE launched. In the same article mentioning Brown’s arrest, Bob Littlefield acknowledged using both volunteers and paid staff but declined to answer questions about how many of each were in the field.
Littlefield has avoided answering questions about his funding sources as well. He was quoted in the article as saying another political action committee had mentioned it was interested in working with TAAAZE but declined due to the costs involved. He said the funding details would be available when his group files its campaign finance report. That report is due in January, well after the cutoff for signature submission.
Littlefield has also stated in an open letter to Axon CEO Rick Smith he has procured more than 12,000 of the 15,353 signatures needed to put the referendum on the ballot. He would not provide a current count for the news article.
For its part, Axon has pledged to challenge as many signatures as possible to get any potential referendum rejected.
Whatever the outcome of the petition drive, it is likely the referendum would not be presented to voters until the spring of 2026, since signatures have to be counted and verified, and challenges must be processed and addressed under the rules of due process.
