Gilbert panel OKs big mixed-use project

Town Planning Manager Ashlee Macdonald said the developers have a concurrent design review application with the new plans for the plot.

Dubbed Aura San Tan, it includes 357 apartments spread across three buildings with some ground-floor offices.

The southwest office space amounts to 10,727 square feet and the northern building is expected to have 5,348 square feet of office space.

Town staff opposed the reduction of regional commercial use on the site, noting Gilbert’s land use code requires 20% of a mixed-use development to be designated for retail.

“That is staff’s primary concern with this request, the significant deviation from the standard of the code,” McDonald said, noting the site falls in the Central 202 core growth area, which already has many high-density residential developments.

She added that with the town nearing buildout, a balance needs to be struck between the amount of commercial and residential development.

“We felt that this property was a good candidate for the mixed-use zoning district, but I think we’re a little bit concerned about the integration between the non-residential land uses, compared to the high percentage of multifamily family that’s being proposed in an area of the town that already has a significant amount of multifamily,” she said.

Breaking down the current land use numbers across Gilbert, Macdonald pointed out that 70.86% of Gilbert land is already designated for residential and only 9.54% is set aside for commercial use.

Town staff also took the developer’s proposal for review with the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce in March and got this feedback:

“While the Gilbert Chamber believes the parcel for the proposed project is a strong fit for a mixed-use concept, we encourage the applicant to conform to the Town’s definition of mixed-use to meet the standard requirements. Should the applicant comply, the Gilbert Chamber would support this rezone request.”

While town staff recommended the denial of the developer’s request, Macdonald noted that if the commissioners were to recommend Town Council approval, there would be 24 conditions the developer must meet.

The conditions include completing a share of right-of-way landscape improvements on adjacent roads, establishing a Property Owners Association (POA) to maintain common areas and landscaping around the property, compliance with building setbacks and even building a right turn deceleration lane at the intersection of Rome Street and Pecos Road.

Attorney Adam Baugh, who represented the developer, said that the land has been zoned for commercial use since 1999 but no developers have submitted applications to build anything even with the surrounding grocery stores and office buildings.

“I want to point out here, in 2004 there was this project called Main Street Commons. Main Street Commons was from the developers Woodbine, they’re the same developers that built Kierland Commons in Scottsdale and you probably are familiar with it, bottom floor retail, upper floors residential,” he said.

“And they wanted to replicate the success of Kierland Commons and bring it down to Gilbert. And everybody was super excited about it. All along, the plan was to do residential above and ground floor commercial. But what nobody anticipated was a recession.”

Due to the recession, the land was broken up into pieces and sold to multiple owners and rezoned in 2012 for Val Vista Square Planned Area Development.

Citing Kierland Commons, Baugh pointed out that 13% of that site was developed for multifamily, while the rest was divided among retail, industrial, office and hotel uses.

“If I could speak on behalf of the owner, we would prefer retail here as well, it certainly would have paid significantly more than multi-family over all the years that they would have come here,” he said.

“We’ve marketed it for retail since 2009, during our ownership. We’ve marketed it for office for seven of those years. We’ve consistently tried to make this anything but what we’re trying to do today,” he added.

With an apartment complex on the plot, Baugh noted that it will help drive more traffic to the commercial areas of the mixed-use development.

Baugh also stated that since bringing the initial proposal to the Planning Commission, the developer has reduced the apartments from 366 to 357, increased the commercial space from 9,137 square feet to 16,075 square feet and added outdoor commercial amenity spaces for 3,085 square feet.

The developer has also increased the open space from 20% to 28.23% and added increased parking from 563 to 636 spaces.

With the addition of a VA hospital to the west of the plot in 2013, Baugh said that there was “no more uniform vision” for a mixed-use development like Main Street Commons.

“The problem is you are stuck with this roadway that would never have been built here if you weren’t building Main Street Commons. And so, we have to live with the consequences of that,” Baugh said. “Now, there’s four remaining vacant parcels, but all those are on retail corridors where we would never put our project because they have vitality, they have a possibility.”

“What makes us different and why we can be successful is, I call it the ‘Goldilock Zone.’ There is a sweet spot of office that does work, it’s just the right amount,” he said.

“I can build offices that are 1500 square feet to 4,000 square feet. I can market them and I can flex them. I can be nimble with them.”

Morgan Neville, a representative of assets management company Park Corporation, said his company owns the 58 acres where the parcel now lies.

“I also just want to tell you that we think this is the right use for this location, not only because office doesn’t work, retail doesn’t work here, but it’s the right use for the right time,” he said. “The nation is in a housing crisis. This metropolitan area is in a housing crisis, high density multi-family is the most efficient way to provide homes for people.”

The commissioners were generally positive about the updated plans.

Commissioner Lisa Gage noted that it was a “weird location” and anticipated that even the commercial spaces the developer is going to put in might not work.

Baugh said office or medical commercial spaces, especially to supplement the VA hospital near the west end, was what the developer planned.

Baugh explained that as per the town’s land use code, the developer couldn’t add more commercial space without adding more commercial parking.

“What’s interesting is parking for commercial use isn’t the same ratio as parking for residential. Even though I trim off a bunch of residential units, I don’t necessarily get a lot of commercial,” he said.

Andersen said he approved of the project, especially since there is a vast amount of retail in the area already, a sentiment that Commissioner Jän Simon echoed.