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This Week
BUSINESS..................30
Korean cuisine now offered in Ahwatukee.
SPORTS ........................ 36 Pride crushes Monsoons in season opener.
www.ahwatukee.com
Neighbors score Upper Canyon win for Chandler Boulevard BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
R
esidents of three far-west Ahwatukee communities scored a victory last week as the developers of the massive Upper Canyon subdivision dropped their efforts to avoid widening South Chandler Boulevard to five lanes. The surprise announcement at the Phoenix Planning Commission’s Sept. 1 monthly meeting means homeowners in Calabria, Promontory and Foothills Reserve can expect that portion of the boulevard will eventually be widened. And it means that builders Blandford Homes, D.R. Horton and Reserve 100 LLC likely can
stay on their timetable to start construction late this year or early next with an eye to hitting the market by 2024. Developers already have the zoning in place to build 1,050 mostly single-story houses, 150 build-to-rent townhouses and 329 apartments on the 373-acre former State Trust Land parcel along Chandler Boulevard between 19th and 27th avenues. But they needed City Council approval of a proposal to leave S. Chandler Boulevard three lanes and downgrade the classification of S. 27th Avenue between the boulevard and South Mountain Freeway. The commission did approve changing 27th Avenue’s designation to “local street.” Under the street classification system the
city approved in 2009, a roadway with that designation “provides for short-distance traffic movement with less than 1,000 average vehicle trips a day and “primarily functions to provide direct access to abutting land and for traffic movement within neighborhoods.” Such roadways remain at one lane in each direction and relatively few in the city have that designation, according to the city zoning laws. The 27th Avenue request still needs council approval and it is unclear when that will occur. The agenda for council’s meeting today, Sept. 7, did not list it. In August, several Planning Commission. members delayed action on Blandford’s re-
see CANYON page 12
Scientists make for lively Lest we forget ... LD12 candidate debate BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
T
he two Ahwatukee scientists in the race to represent Legislative District 12 last week fueled a lively 90-minute debate sponGETOUT......................... Ahwatukee restaurant gets head sored by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission. start on Oktoberfest. In what likely will be the only deCOMMUNITY......................24 bate for the district that covers AhBUSINESS .......................... 30 watukee as well as northern and OPINION..............................34 west Chandler and parts of Tempe SPORTS............................... 36 and Mesa, Senate Republican hopeGETOUT............................... 41 ful David Richardson and House CLASSIFIEDS ...................... 47 Democratic candidate Stacey Trav-
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Wednesday, September 7, 2022
ers stood out to a degree with stinging attacks on their opponents. That’s not to say the others sat by passively. House Republican hopefuls and Chandler residents Jim Chaston and Terry Roe, Democratic Senate contender Rep. Mitzi Epstein of Tempe and House Democratic candidate Patty Contreras of Ahwatukee also weighed in on issues that included education funding, future water needs, local control over short-term rentals and abortion.
see DEBATE page 7
As the nation approaches the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and on an airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania, local volunteers are preparing a somber memorial at Tempe Beach Park while numerous nonprofits are scheduling service projects throughout this week. For details, see page 25. (Special to AFN)
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