Queen Creek P&Z recommends approval for parking lot

The Queen Creek Planning & Zoning Commission has recommended a rezoning and site plan that would allow a local real estate development firm to expand its parking lot on land currently in Maricopa County.

At its Wednesday meeting, the commission voted 6-0 to recommend the requests by Carder Development to the Queen Creek Town Council. Chairman David Gilette was absent.

Concurrently, the council will take up Carder Development’s request to annex the less than 1-acre site where the expanded parking lot is proposed.

In 2025 and 2026, Carder Development received entitlements and building permits from the town to build a 17,070-square-foot, one-story commercial office building on approximately 1.79 acres at 26214 S. Ellsworth Road. The proposed parking site is immediately north of the building.

“The Carder family had actually hoped to acquire this parcel and make it part of the original approval back in 2024, 2025, but they were unable to make that happen at that time,” Carder Development’s representative, Chris Webb of the Rose Law Group, told the commission. “Fortunately, about 12 months ago, they were able to successfully acquire the parcel, and so they decided to come back through the process here so that we can add it to the (main) project.”

The council will hold a public hearing on the proposed annexation at its Sept. 16 meeting.

If the council approves the annexation, the site will receive the equivalent zoning of residential. The council will take up Carder Development’s request to rezone the site to light commercial at a future meeting.

The 0.72-acre property is located north of the northwest corner of Ellsworth and Happy roads in Maricopa County.

“It’s only 95-feet wide. Very skinny. And because of that, it’s too narrow to build a house on and meet residential setbacks. It’s also too narrow for commercial buildings of any size, any use,” Webb said. “The only practical use of it is to try to incorporate it into one of the adjacent properties and adjacent projects.”

The proposed new lot will have 50 parking spaces.

The site is bordered by rural-residential uses in unincorporated Maricopa County to the west, the Carder development to the south, future office uses within town limits to the north, and vacant commercially zoned property east of Ellsworth Road, which is planned for future commercial and auto-oriented uses, according to a staff report.

“The proposed parking expansion seeks to increase capacity for office tenants and shall meet demand for flexible office space, while creating appropriate commercial activity for rural-designated areas,” the report stated.

The site landscaping plan will provide a 13-foot-wide buffer on the western boundary and a 20-foot-wide landscape buffer on the eastern boundary that will also include a 4-foot-tall solid wall.

“I appreciate anything that makes the town look cleaner, nicer,” Commission Member Ashley Baldwin said. “I looked at that area after I had learned about this, and I think it will really clean up and be not an eyesore anymore.”

Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org. Please send your comments about this article to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.