March 9, 2007

Housing construction is booming in the city of Maricopa despite a drop from last year’s record housing permits. City leaders and economic development officials are trying to complement the residential boom with the addition of retail, office and industrial space in the community.

The scene in Maricopa these days is nothing out of the ordinary in Arizona, where even amid a housing slump, new residential building soldiers on.

What is out of the ordinary in Maricopa, which rose out of the northern Pinal County desert in October 2005 -- when it officially incorporated as a city -- is the pace of this growth.

Since the city's first census just less than three years ago, it has grown from 4,523 residents to an estimated 31,490 -- a staggering increase of about 596 percent.

Though housing permit rates in the city have cooled significantly from the mid-2005 boom where some months saw more than 700 new-home permits issued, Maricopa still issues a healthy 200 permits or so a month.

As residents continue to pour into the fledgling city, officials are facing the new job of ensuring that Maricopa is more than simply a sleepy bedroom community.

Nearly 50 percent of Maricopa residents commute 21 to 30 miles into the Valley each day for work, according to an October survey of 1,041 residents, many to jobs at south Scottsdale employers such as Motorola Inc. Now, Maricopa is trying to bring employers to these workers, said Maricopa Mayor Kelly Anderson.

"We are working with land owners and property owners and keeping the residential-employment balance, so we're not just a bedroom community," he said.

The town aggressively is pursuing high-end manufacturing and office jobs while maintaining a high residential building rate, thereby turning the "rooftops to retail to industrial" city model on its ear.

More diverse community

Since its recent incorporation, Maricopa has faced the challenge of building a city in only a matter of years.

"There's unique challenges in Maricopa because it just incorporated a couple of years ago, and everything's new," said Jordan Rose, a land-use attorney with Scottsdale-based Rose Law Group, which handles 90 percent of its cases in Pinal County. "You're there before they've actually ever implemented anything."

Rose said the city requires developers to design creative, yet affordable housing options to avoid "the same old red-tile roofs."

She cites developments with amenities such as a telescope area, a duck pond, fishing pond and even a community farm as examples.

Anderson said the town is pushing developers to incorporate churches and nonprofits into communities and ensure affordable housing.

The median new home price in Maricopa in third-quarter 2006 was $251,010, according to the city census; the median price for a new home in Phoenix in 2006 was $303,665, according to figures from the Arizona State University Real Estate Center.

Ben Redman, president of WestPac Developers, said the market also is dictating more unique developments. WestPac has two projects in Maricopa: Sorrento, a 1,900-home master-planned community currently in its first stage of development, and Cortona, a 1,600-home community in the early planning stages.

"Everybody tries to come to the table with their own specific, creative elements to make their community a little different from their competitors," he said. "Collectively, when you look at that, that makes for a more dynamic, more diverse community."

Redman said that, like in other new communities in which he's worked, the home builder is responsible for infrastructure.

Maricopa is working with a private company to develop its sewer and water infrastructure, which is being oversized in preparation for growth, Anderson said.

Though the city's focus has been on single-family homes, Anderson said Maricopa has apartment and condominiums in the works, too.

"We do have a lot of condos and multifamily residential in the planning stages right now," he said. "In the next year and half, I would imagine you would see a lot of that product coming on the market."

Why not Maricopa?

To accompany this burgeoning citizen base, the city is pursuing high-end jobs that many other cities would wait a decade or more to attract, said Ioanna Morfessis, the city's senior economic development consultant.

Many Arizona communities focus more on residential than retail, with high-end employment years down the road, Morfessis said.

"We're getting things put into place for now, so we don't have to wait 15 or 20 years for significant employment," she said.

The city is focusing on agri-biotech, manufacturing and regional aviation as several key employment opportunities.

"The citizens want and deserve a good employment base," Morfessis said. "As young as (this) city is, we're looking to get behind the right kind of companies (and) the right kind of business parks in place. ... We need to paint the picture for them what the city is going to be."

Anderson said his theory is, "Why not Maricopa?"

He often stresses the importance of the city's interstate and rail connectivity -- the Union Pacific railroad runs through Maricopa -- in meetings with business leaders. He said he hopes to get derivatives of companies such as Intel Corp. and Motorola to open offices in the city.

Barry Broome, president and chief executive of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, said Maricopa needs to focus on both residential and industrial needs for success.

"Retailers will follow employment centers more than they'll follow housing," he said. "Rooftops to retail works, but what about the sustainability of that? ... (With) employment to residential to retail, you're going to be more sustainable and economically viable.

"All these communities are growing like crazy. I think it's too easy to see that as an outcome," Broome added.

Morfessis said the community will use this growth to bring more businesses and people into the city.

"Our goal is to get behind companies that are growing or are continuing to grow because of their market and letting them know about the opportunities within Maricopa," she said.

Get connected
City of Maricopa: www.cityofmaricopa.net