San Tan Valley starts looking at town recreational options

San Tan Valley may have a population of more than 100,000, but as a new town, it also has a clean slate when it comes to parks and other recreational amenities.

“This town has exactly zero square feet of parks, zero square feet of facilities, and we own no land. So that’s a challenging place for us to start,” Town Manager Brent Billingsley said. “We’re literally starting from zero with a population over 100,000.”

At the San Tan Valley Town Council’s Sept. 2 meeting, Billingsley introduced plans that may get some recreational areas such as pathways and trails to the town, but not anytime in the near future.

The town currently has no funds to even start a parks and recreation department as it waits for tax mechanisms to begin generating revenue.

“Council approved in our annual budget the hiring of a parks and recreation director. We cannot hire that position at this time, but it’s something that we’ll look at. We’re very conservative with our funds, and we want to make sure that we’re being very responsible with our expenditures and our budget,” Billingsley told the council. “From a staff perspective, we’re going to wait until we have six months of data to see where we are on revenue versus expenditures.”

In preparation, and with the council’s blessing, town staff will further explore creating dual-use infrastructure projects to begin bringing some recreational opportunities to residents and provide flood safety.

“Dual-use infrastructure in this case would be using public spaces or property as a secondary use. In this case … being able to use existing flood basins in (homeowners’ associations) or that are owned by Pinal County or the flood control district at some point to build improvements, so that we can provide, for instance, practice space for some of our local sports teams,” Billingsley said.

The advantages to dual-use infrastructure would be the elimination of land costs and reduced construction costs.

Along with HOAs and the county, the town is already in preliminary talks with the Florence and J.O. Combs unified school districts to possibly use their facilities.

“We have discussed and are in negotiations with the Florence Unified School District for potential space,” Billingsley said. “We are in discussions with J.O Combs School District to negotiate a deal to acquire some space, once again, for practice facilities for baseball, soccer, flag football, cheerleading, those types of things. And then the dual infrastructure option is still there.”

To illustrate the magnitude of costs associated with buying land and building parks, Billingsley told the council that with land costing $120,000 to $150,000 an acre in San Tan Valley a small unlit park would cost $150,000 to $250,000 an acre. A lighted sports complex and park would cost $350,000 to $550,000 an acre. A splash pad would cost between $500,000 to $750,000 — and that’s on the inexpensive side.

“If you get a chance one of these days and you’re at a Queen Creek council meeting, ask them what they paid for their splash pad. It was a lot more than that,” Billingsley said.

Community and aquatic centers can run from $20 million to at least $60 million. For comparison, Queen Creek’s Recreation & Aquatic Center cost more than $65 million.

“This is just to build the facility, not including operations and maintenance of these facilities, so that adds a whole other realm of things,” Councilmember Gia Jenkins pointed out.

Vice Mayor Tyler Hudgins called the potential partnerships with the schools, HOAs and the county to provide recreational areas a priority for the town’s teens.

“We had the sheriff out here several months ago. One of the questions I asked him was, ‘What’s the most unique thing about San Tan Valley’s crime compared to other cities and areas that they patrol?’ He said the unique thing about San Tan Valley is juvenile crime and the reason is there’s nothing for them to do,” Hudgins said. “We have to be thinking about the next generation.”

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.