Shane Leonard knows the Ocotillo Road area well and the situation Gilbert and Maricopa County island residents along the road find themselves in. He grew up not far away, at the corner of Higley and Williams Field roads at a time when it was as bucolic as the Ocotillo Road stretch is now.
“Everything that I grew up with — riding horses, all that kind of good stuff — is now underneath pavement, asphalt, sidewalk and more than likely somebody's couch or pool,” he said. “So I have a tremendous amount of empathy for what the county residents are going through.”
He also knows well the plans that have upset the residents along Ocotillo Road in a stretch from just east of Greenfield to 148th Street, an area that is scheduled to be widened to minor arterial road standard. Gilbert also has an accompanying project to put a bridge over washes from Greenfield to Higley Road, where no road currently exists, and Chandler has one that picks up the widening at 148th Street and takes it to Gilbert Road.
