A project to widen a section of Ocotillo Road as that road heads toward finally being completed in town continues to draw the ire of landowners along the route.
The landowners, some of whom are county island residents in the Gilbert planning area, have objected to the increased traffic from turning Ocotillo into a minor arterial road, but more so, that a 65-foot right of way the town is asking for would cost them too much of their own front yards.
The town says the project is needed to complete a transportation corridor between municipalities in Maricopa County, to balance the vehicular transportation network in town for congestion and safety, and to reduce emergency response times in the area.
The town met with the impacted property owners in mid-October, and the project team has begun reaching out to property owners to resume right-of-way acquisition, which officials said they anticipate could take up to 18 months. That team also is finalizing 60% design plan review, and construction would last about 12 months after acquisitions.
“We recognize for the residents in this corridor specifically, what they’re feeling is angst over change and angst over the impacts to their properties that that change is bringing,” Assistant Town Manager Leah Rhineheimer said. “And so we are reminding ourselves as well as reminding them, whenever we plan for these types of projects, we’re looking at what the infrastructure needs are for today, but also what’s going to be needed in the next 10 years, 20 years and beyond.”
The project
Ocotillo Road turns to a dirt road just east of Greenfield Road and then stops at a Roosevelt Water Conservation District canal a little less than a half mile away. It picks up again just west of Higley Road, on the other side of what has become Gilbert Regional Park.
A plan to bridge washes that make up the East Maricopa Floodway in the park to complete Ocotillo Road is a separate but related project.
Ocotillo Road is mostly a two-lane road west of Greenfield Road, widening to three lanes a little before it gets to 148th Street and further still west of there until it ends at Dobson Road, where the Intel Corporation’s Ocotillo campus is located.
Despite its size and relative lack of traffic — somewhere between 4,200 and 6,000 cars a day, depending on whose study you look at — Ocotillo already is designated as a minor arterial road. Minor arterials allow for travel through different communities and do not go into neighborhoods.
The project, however, is meant to bring Ocotillo up to the standards set for minor arterials: 65 feet of width on each side of the right of way and an 8-foot public utility easement outside the right of way. The right of way is the publicly owned and accessible space primarily used for transportation and utilities. An easement allows for access to land, in this case for public utility use.
Town officials said expanding Ocotillo would allow for it to handle more traffic and relieve congestion from Queen Creek Road to the north and Chandler Heights to the south.
Challenges
However, Ocotillo presents a host of challenges, most of which are out of sight under the street. Salt River Project has a 10-foot encumbrance on the south side of Ocotillo for its electrical distribution system, while the Roosevelt Water Conservation District has 20 feet on the north side. Town officials said both would prefer to remain outside the roadway when the road is widened.
Additionally, a slew of utilities are under the street: Cox Cable, Southwest Gas, town of Gilbert water lines and even a city of Chandler 36-inch water main down the center of the street. That’s twice the size of the one that shut down the U.S. 60 at McClintock Drive in Tempe for three weeks when it broke in May.
Gilbert also is looking to put in a sewer line as well as a storm drain, something it prefers not to do but felt was appropriate in this situation so as not to require each property to be modified to handle storm runoff, Town Engineer David Fabiano said.
If the town were to widen the right of way to 65 feet on each side and give SRP and RWCD their current easements off the roadway, the project would require 75 feet to private property on the south and 85 feet on the north, a situation the town viewed as too burdensome on homeowners and sent the town looking for solutions.
“The approach we’re using really tries to take all of these and marry them together so that we’re getting the greatest amount of benefit to the community for the least amount of impact that we can make on those residents that live along the roadway,” Fabiano said.
Toward that end, the town earned a couple of concessions from SRP and RWCD, officials said. Each was willing to keep their exclusive easements within the right of way so long as that right of way was at 65 feet each side. Furthermore, RWCD was willing to consider taking its entitlement down to 14 feet.
Neither would be under the roadway, but under a surfacing that would be more accessible and more easily replaced. A path could be placed over that surface on one side, which is shown in designs the town has put in front of landowners.
However, if the town took the right of way down to 55 feet, each utility would require its easement be outside the roadway and not within any property fences. On the RWCD side, that means homeowners actually would have to be 69 feet from the centerline — 4 feet further than if the right of way is 65 feet.
The presence of a path also has been a point of contention with property owners.
“There’s been so much confusion from some of the residents thinking that it’s the trees and the sidewalk that are driving the design,” Rhineheimer said. “They’re like, we don’t want them, take the trees and the sidewalk away and then we’re fine. And in reality, we’ve got all of this underneath, and for RWCD to make the concession that they will allow the decomposed granite path over their utility is huge.”
Adding to the challenge is the number of driveways along the project — 21 existing and seven more requested — many more than is typical of a minor arterial road, Fabiano said, adding these “conflict points” create a safety issue.
“This is not a desirable situation,” he said. “This is not the way we want it to be, but we can’t change it. So what we’re doing is looking for every way we can to mitigate and manage that, to keep it as safe and provide a safe corridor as we’re able.”
The town presented to homeowners a rendering of their site lines from their property with a fence in place at 55, 60 and 65 feet of right of way. The idea was to show them what could be seen at 65 and obstructed at shorter rights of way.
Officials said most of the properties have a fence and thus will contend with possible obstruction. The town also wants the residents to have some ability to turn around in their driveway so that they can be forward facing as they leave their driveways, as opposed to backing out on a minor arterial road with a 45-mph speed limit.
Safety comes up in one other way: emergency response. Fire Station 9, the closest to the area, is on Ocotillo east of Higley. Town officials said the Fire Department finds response times to the area to be unacceptable, but once the road is completed, the more-direct path should solve the issue.
Homeowners’ concerns
Despite the compromises, many homeowners remain unswayed.
“I think every single one of them has expressed that it’s going to change their way of life,” Assistant Town Engineer Susanna Struble said.
Terri Naddy, a county island resident, has been perhaps the most vocal opponent. She and her husband, Eric, stand to lose about 12 feet in on their property, approximately 4,000 square feet, Eric Naddy told town council in May.
Terri Naddy, who has been a dogged researcher of the town’s rights of ways and easements, dismissed the presentation from the town before council at its Oct. 18 meeting.
“It’s amazing how statistics and facts are easily skewed by the presenter,” she said.
Naddy has questioned the need for a 65-foot right of way, the inclusion of safety as a town talking” point and the inconsistency of the application of the minor arterial standards.
“I want you to know that your arbitrary changes in the past to the standard, Gilbert’s standard for minor arterial (roads), you can’t just pick and choose,” she said. “It’s not OK.”
Town officials acknowledge there are areas where minor arterials do not meet current standards, but they said it is a function of the conditions along those arterials and the time in which the area was developed.
Rhineheimer said the town wants to avoid not planning adequately for infrastructure.
“There was just this explosion of growth, and it didn’t always give us the ability to plan with an eye toward the future,” she said. “And we’re trying to learn from those mistakes and those missed opportunities.”
Rich Robertson, another county island resident, also opposes the right of way being at 65 feet. Robertson said when he bought his home about 20 years ago, he always knew the road would be widened but anticipated it would be at a 55-foot right of way.
He further noted that Maricopa County in the intervening years has frequently approved building permits for pools, walls, outbuildings and even subdivisions that would conform with a 55-foot right of way.
Robertson compared the communication from the town with county island residents unfavorably to what the town has done with its residents on the Ocotillo Bridge, which has a web page and survey for residents.
The town also has admitted it could have done better with communication, one of the reasons it took another look at the project since last spring and held the meetings with residents in October.
“We do 100% want to acknowledge that this is an impact,” Fabiano said.
Tom Blodgett can be reached at tblodgett@iniusa.org and found on twitter @sp_blodgett.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
town of Gilbert,
Ocotillo Road Widening,
Roosevelt Water Conservation District,
Salt River Project,
David Fabiano,
Leah Rhineheimer,
Susanna Struble,
Terri Naddy,
Eric Naddy,
Rich Robertson
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