Rio Nuevo happy to get dirty deal from Pima County

Pima County wants to dump a huge load of dirt on Rio Nuevo — and the Rio Nuevo board is super excited about it.

“This is the deal of a lifetime,” Rio Nuevo chairman Fletcher McCusker said at a board meeting Tuesday.

It’s no April Fools’ joke.

Pima County needs to dredge about 200,000 cubic yards of dirt out of a long strip of the Santa Cruz River between West 22nd Street and West Grant Road to address flood control problems.

Rio Nuevo needs to find a solution for an unusable piece of land that used to be a landfill, at the base of “A” Mountain along South Mission Road.

It’s “destined to be a parking lot” if left the way it is, McCusker said.

“The county has proposed that instead of them hauling that dirt to Timbuktu, they place it on the Rio Nuevo-owned land immediately west of the river,” he said.

The county would also put dirt on a site closer to Grant Road, said Suzanne Shields, director of the county’s Regional Flood Control District.

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Putting all that dirt on the old landfill site could let Rio Nuevo at least put in landscaping — at county expense — and put in some trails.

At best, Rio Nuevo could build up a portion of the property to make it developable.

It’s also a great deal for county taxpayers when the county saves on hauling costs, board member Edmund Marquez said.

The cost to remediate the landfill site was estimated at an undoable $44 million, McCusker said.

Next, Rio Nuevo and the county will work with a landscape architect on a detailed plan.

In other action:

• Rio Nuevo saved $5.4 million in interest costs by refinancing 2008 bonds. The new interest rate is 2.78 percent, down from nearly 6.5 percent. The Tucson branch of BBVA Compass bank bought the $70 million issuance. The move frees up $3.6 million from a required reserve fund, which can be reinvested in new downtown projects.
• The board approved a schedule and spending on the construction of a new Greyhound bus terminal near East Broadway and Euclid Avenue. Construction is scheduled to begin in August.
• The board approved a $319,000 loan commitment to the Foundation for Senior Living for its $24 million apartment project at West Broadway and South Church Avenue. The developer must win low-income housing tax credits this summer for the agreement to take effect. Rio Nuevo would acquire an easement alongside the project.