Goodyear City Projects to Gain Ground in 2020

By Mark Carlisle for Independent Newsmedia
The coming year in Goodyear will be marked by the development of four major city projects, plenty more businesses coming to town and continued population growth.
Goodyear is planning two new fire stations, a recreation center, a water treatment facility and a Civic Square, which will include a new City Hall, a new library, a two-acre park for festivals and retail and office space.
City Projects
Each of the planned city projects are at different stages. Fire Station 186, at Northeast Rainbow Valley and Willis roads, will be the first to be completed. It breaks ground in March and is scheduled to be completed by December. Fire Station 181, down the street from City Hall at 14370 W. Van Buren Street, will be completed in 2021.
The Goodyear Recreation Campus, at Estrella Parkway and Goodyear Boulevard, broke ground in the fall and is planned to open in the summer of 2021. It will include a 30-acre park complete with baseball, softball and multipurpose fields; tennis, basketball, pickleball and sand volleyball courts; a playground, public art and plaza. It will also include a 48KSF recreation facility complete with multipurpose rooms, lockers and showers, fitness areas and an aquatic facility.
The new water treatment plant, at 4980 S. 157th Avenue, also broke ground in the fall and is scheduled for completion by December 2021. The plant will provide for the city’s projected growth through at least 2045.
City Manager Julie Arendall noted that while a lot of residents might not believe they see personal benefit from new businesses like Nike or a distribution warehouse locating in Goodyear, staff is able to take the revenue from the construction sales tax of these projects and use it for one-time expenses like building these city projects without raising taxes.
Civic Square
For the largest city project, 2020 will be a planning year. Groundbreaking for the Civic Square, at the NWC of McDowell Road and 150th Drive, is planned for April 2021. It’s expected to be fully completed by mid-2022, but the city aims to complete the center’s park in time for it to host part of the celebration of the city’s 75th anniversary on November 21st, 2021.
The current City Hall was purchased as an “interim city hall” in 2001, but somewhere along the line “interim” was dropped as plans for a new City Hall kept getting pushed back as other needs arose. The new City Hall, a four-story, 125KSF building, will not be temporary, Arendall said.
While a final decision has not been made, the city will likely sell the current City Hall building once staff moves into the new one, Arendall said.
Mayor Georgia Lord noted the new library will be twice the size of the current one.
In addition to the public buildings, Civic Square will include a three-story, 100KSF office building built by Globe Corporation. This project is unique to Goodyear in that the office space is being built without a user. Arendall said this shows Globe has confidence in the community that users will come if it builds office space. She said most office users want existing office space, but Goodyear has had little to offer lately.
Arendall and Lord were both confident the Globe office building would kick off other construction in the area.
On the east side of 150th Drive, across from the Civic Square site, Macerich is planning 11KSF of retail space near the Harkins theaters and recently opened Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen.
“We’re starting to see development on the other side of 150th (Drive), and so we’re confident that as our project comes up, it’s really going to further activate the area,” Arendall said.
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