Letters: Grand plan still needed for Surprise City Center

I read with interest Scott Phillips’ Guest Commentary in this week’s edition regarding progress in City Center development efforts. Interestingly, he points to “nearly $100 million of capital investment in the City Center over a 36 month period.”

But the question remains, what is the plan for this development? For, as Yogi would say, “if you don’t know where you are going, you may never get there!” We have been talking about the development of a plan for the Civic Center at least since the Settlement Agreement with the owner/developer in 2016.

Mr. Phillips mentions a “master plan which the community came together and helped create.” But as far as I know, the only community involvement in this area was a series of forums last year in which the developer received comments on a conceptual map for where different activities might be located in the City Center.

Certainly, to my knowledge, this map was never accepted by the community on any level, including by the City Council.

From my discussions in the community, I don’t believe the developer’s “block diagram” represents what many have in mind for this crown jewel of our community. It’s my impression that the community’s vision for the City Center is still better represented by the 2001 City Center Planned Area Development document, which presented guidelines for how the City Center might best be realized.

The concern here is that, without a community-accepted vision and plan for our City Center, we are likely to end up with a hodge-podge of unrelated uses — such as we narrowly averted a couple of years ago when the Council turned down a proposal to construct a large, monolithic subdivision as an anchor for this development.