Developer versus neighbors — you’ve heard this sort of story before.
Tucson’s history is rife with development battles like the one that played out at West 36th Street and South La Cholla Blvd., ending in February 2022. That’s when the City Council approved a hard-fought zoning change for the 60 acres, allowing 137 housing units to be built there, while preserving half the land as open space.
That development battle is experiencing a public revival now, in the Democratic primary campaign for the Ward 1 council seat. Mayor Regina Romero even dedicated her Friday, June 23 weekly email to explaining and defending the development’s approval. Council Member Steve Kozachik discussed it in a June 18 Star op-ed.
It’s a good thing for voters: I think this case illustrates nicely a key difference between the candidates, incumbent Lane Santa Cruz and challenger Miguel Ortega.
In short, I view Santa Cruz as a sort of YIMBY. That’s short for “Yes In My Back Yard” and is a relatively recent phrase adopted by people who want more urban development to address the crisis of housing affordability — a top priority for Santa Cruz. This may mean dealing with developers cooperatively in a way Tucson Democrats did not do so much before.
And I view Ortega as a sort of NIMBY. That, of course, is short for the old phrase “Not In My Back Yard,” often used to refer to people who stand in the way of developments. In this case, Ortega says he would have voted against the plan the city approved, in line with neighbors’ protests. And that’s more typical of the local Democratic tradition when such protests arise.
Neither of them would fully embrace these labels, of course, but I think they’re a decent fit, at least in this case.
The city annexed the area, south of Tumamoc Hill and Cholla High School, in 1979. As part of the annexation, the city preserved the county’s zoning, allowing for lots no smaller than 36,000 square feet, just over eight-tenths of an acre. Tweaks of the zoning allowed for two housing units on each lot, and for mobile homes to be placed there.
Over the years, neighbors have hoped for and worked on the possibility of preserving the acreage that surrounds Henry “Hank” Oyama Elementary School, which sits right on the corner of 36th and La Cholla. The Westside Neighborhood Association was even founded in 2005 in part to protect this acreage from a development proposal.
“That would pretty much ruin the aesthetics and quality of life in our neighborhood,” association organizer Scott Archer told the Star that year.
When a new proposal by property owner Buena Vista Properties 2000 arose in 2020, the response from neighbors was much the same.
“We are on the edge of Tucson,” noted Abreeza Zegeer, who until recently chaired that neighborhood association. “We wanted it to be a desert park. We thought that would be great next to Oyama School and near Kennedy Park.”
She and others explained that the neighborhood is semi-rural to the north and west, with Kennedy Park to the south. Only the Enchanted Hills neighborhood, the 1960s development across La Cholla from this parcel, is relatively densely developed.
So, at minimum, if they couldn’t get the open space they wanted, many neighbors hoped that the city would preserve the zoning approved after annexation, keeping the lots big and the homes spread out.
Santa Cruz told me they heard the neighbors’ desire for open space and tried to balance that against the owner’s plans and the community’s needs. Attorney Keri Silvyn, representing the owner, proposed various configurations, including with a cluster of housing south of the Enchanted Hills Wash.
The deal, in the end, left that southern half of the property as open space and pushed the development of 137 units into a densely constructed northern half, with 14 units preserved as affordable housing.
The question was, Santa Cruz said, “How do we encourage housing — because we are in a housing crisis and we need housing for folks — and also have significant open space?”
This fits into a broader theme of their first term as a council member — encouraging more housing construction. Santa Cruz was perhaps the leading council member pushing for the passage of a new ordinance that allowed for more guest houses to be built in people’s yards under the city’s new “accessory dwelling unit” zoning.
“Low supply is what makes our housing prices be so high,” Santa Cruz said Tuesday. “A lot of us can’t afford to purchase a home, myself included. We need to have housing at different price points so that the more affordable housing isn’t bought up by people who can afford to pay more.”
While Santa Cruz doesn’t label herself a YIMBY, this is YIMBY logic. And it’s an argument I’ve made repeatedly in my columns — simply, we need to act faster and create more housing for everybody.
But Ortega says Santa Cruz violated a key principle in coming to the deal: They didn’t listen.
“The La Cholla and 36th issue is one of many issues of Lane not listening to people, not representing their constituents, and basically following Lane’s ideology before actually representing the constituents of the ward,” he told me Monday.
“The residents made it very clear to Lane, through several meetings, emails, phone calls that they didn’t want that condition removed, and (Santa Cruz) went ahead and did it anyway,” Ortega said.
He would have voted no and pushed to extend negotiations, Ortega said. He would not have accepted the open space on the southern half of the property as a concession, because it would have been costly to develop anyway. In short, he argues Santa Cruz gave too much away to a developer, an accusation often made against YIMBYs, and even accepted a campaign donation from Silvyn.
Ortega may not be a NIMBY through and through, but in this case, he says he would have listened to the neighbors saying “Not In My Back Yard.”
And that’s a pretty clear difference for Ward 1 Democrats to consider when they get their ballots next month.
