Staff Writer, DL Mullan
Community Interest
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On November 12, 2013, residents of the golf community, Villa de Paz, picketed the neighborhood's golf course's club house. Not for better pay or cheaper tee prices, but to keep the golf course apart of their community as a golf course.
Confused yet?
A Canadian developer is hell bent on turning the residents beloved golf course community into a cash cow of HOA fees with new housing and possible condominiums by destroying their golf course in order to do it.
Does that explain the uproar?
The residents, who are eager to keep their community as it is, decided that picketing was a good option to bring attention to their cause. Attention they got. The efforts of the neighborhood to combat the false promises and deceptive practices of the developer's public relations team has become a force to be reckoned with.
In a short time, the residents have banded together to win the Maryvale Village Planning Committee's vote against the development 12 to 1. With 150 speaking on behalf of keeping their golf course intact.
Now the residents have to face the Phoenix City Planning Hearing Office on November 20th, 2013 at 10am. Calvin Goode Building , 251 West Washington Street, 85003. 10th Floor, East Conference Room.
As the developer continues to push residents and place his needs over the community's interests, Villa de Paz residents keep building a stronger case to maintain their living standards. The push back has become fever pitched.
The golf course can be sold as a golf course, but development money has outweighed the sanctity of the community's culture and way of life. Sanctity of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness reigns supreme. Villa de Paz residents only want what every American wants: to live in peace.
Hopefully the City of Phoenix Planning Office and Planning Commission will realize that burdening a small community with overflow traffic, extra students at the local elementary school, more crime, destruction of a green zone and its ecosystem full of wild life, and increasing light pollution, not to mention the clamoring before dawn and health concerns associated with construction in a desert environment so close to private homes, is not a viable outcome, then will the developer understand that money is really no object because some communities cannot be bought.
There is no amount of money in the world that Villa de Paz residents would sell out their community, neighbors, or culture for.
Don't you wish every community was like this one?
