Plans for a new Sabino Canyon Visitor Center are in the works.
The nonprofit Friends of Sabino Canyon and the Coronado National Forest will showcase the project at an open house 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on July 11, at Sheraton Tucson Hotel & Suites, 5151 E Grant Road.
The two organizations are partnering up to on a project to rebuild a new and improved visitor center, which has about a million visitors pass through every year.
“The facilities aren’t adequate to keep up with the sort of pressure put on [them],” said Jim Darling, president of the board of directors for Friends of Sabino Canyon. “Our board decided to jumpstart the process with close collaboration with the forest service.”
In the last 20 years, Sabino Canyon has seen a 70 percent increase in visitors says Adam Milnor, a Coronado National Forest staffer. It’s time to rebuild the center to offer a richer and more meaningful experience to the public, Milnor said.
The new visitor center would be built behind the current one, replacing its “inadequate” utilities and with a “multi-generational’ project that would serve over 30 forest service employees and 5,000-7,000 visitors per day, Milnor said.
The public is welcome to attend the open house to view detailed plans for what the new building could look like and what it would entail. Darling says that this will be 30 percent of the master plan for the new facility.
A virtual presentation will take place from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on on July 18 as well.
A 30-day scoping period will take place from July 11 to August 12, allowing the public to comment on what could be improved.
“We want to have community input on the design,” Milnor said. “This is a pretty important part of our community.”
While it’s too far out to say when this project will be complete, Milnor says he hopes to be through the environmental compliance period by this time next year.
