Jul. 1, 2007 12:00 AM

Pinal County is taking a big breath.

Coming down from two years of dizzying growth that poured 100,000 new people into the county's borders, Pinal now finds itself trying to get a grip on development before the next tidal wave of growth strikes.

County leaders, planners and officials in cities and towns throughout Pinal are capitalizing on a cooling housing market to ask themselves some important questions: Where are we? How did we get here? And most importantly, where are we going?

Many say taking a step back to try and guide growth is a luxury that this up-and-coming county sandwiched between Phoenix and Tucson needs to take advantage of now.

"We're going with a clean slate, but that clean slate is quickly filling up," said Jess Knudson, a management assistant with Florence.

Part of the county's move to take a step back and think about what that full slate could look like appears in a report titled "The Future at Pinal."

The county paid the Morrison Institute for Public Policy $272,000 to develop the report as Pinal prepares to map out future land use, open space, transportation corridors and employment hubs.

The idea is to take an in-depth inventory of the region going from rural roots to an urban outlook.

The goal is to develop a vision to steer development so Pinal doesn't disappear into the suburban shadows of Maricopa and Pima counties.

Starting around 2004, growth blindsided Pinal County.

People entered lotteries fighting for homes in the newest master-planned communities. The county issued a record-breaking 18,700 permits for new single-family houses in 2005. And cities and towns started seeing their first chain grocery stores and Starbucks.

It's a different picture today.

From a peak of 1,785 sales in the second quarter of 2005, Pinal's resale market dipped to 840 transactions in the first quarter of this year.

"We're at a trot now instead of a full-fledged run," said Sandie Smith, one of three Pinal County supervisors. The county's Board of Supervisors deals with much of the zoning and development issues that come with growth.

"While we haven't stopped," Smith said, "we can take a deep breath and address some of the issues we have going forward that we couldn't think about when we were growing so rapidly."

Hopes and fears

"We want to talk about what we want to look like when we grow up," Smith said.

It seems to be more a matter of what Pinal County officials and residents don't want the area to be.

• "We don't want to be a bedroom community for Phoenix and Tucson," said Ken Buchanan, assistant county manager for development services.
• "I don't want us to be like California," said Paul Venegas, a Pinal County resident and business owner.

• "We have to be forward looking while still respecting the past," said C. Alton Bruce, the director of growth management in Coolidge.

But across the board, the consensus is the same: Pinal wants to be different.

It doesn't want clogged roads, a pattern of strip malls and bedroom communities - things already set in motion from the first wave of growth.

"We're really good at growth in Arizona," said Grady Gammage Jr., an expert on Arizona growth with the Morrison Institute. "Stopping to take stock and see if we can make changes and build an identity for the future is not something we can do most of the time.

"It's really fortuitous for Pinal that things have slowed down. If the county keeps going on the default growth scenario, Maricopa will come down to two-thirds of the county, Pima will take the other third and Pinal will end up this big McMega drive-through."

Because most of Pinal County's recent growth has come from single-family homes, some dangerous trends already have started to develop.

About half of the county's population marches out of Pinal's borders every morning for work. And sales-tax-hungry cities and towns are aggressively annexing land, priming for the next auto mall or power center.

The county will have to tackle water, transportation and open-space issues.

Time for game plan

Many believe now is the time to develop the game plan that will lead Pinal into what could be a surprisingly bright future.

Cities and towns are revamping general plans, updating impact fees and preparing for larger wastewater treatment plants. Mayors are meeting for breakfast to talk about regional cooperation, and planners are crossing borders to talk traffic.

"People in Pinal want to have a real distinction from Maricopa and Pima counties," said Rob Melnick, director of the Morrison Institute. "They don't want to be lost in the in-between. But just because they have a vision doesn't mean they're going to rise out of the occasion. They really have a shot at this, but they have a huge amount of work to do."

Pinal sits right in the path of the Sunbelt, where urban planning experts have predicted the nation's next wave of migration. With more than 1.3 million people projected to call the county home by 2050, a new Pinal County will inevitably emerge.

The challenge will be to break from Arizona's traditional model of development - cities and towns getting dragged by the rush and routine of growth - to keep Pinal from disappearing into a seamless blend of its neighboring counties.

"As we are all facing the prospect of this tsunami of change, I think we've come to the determination that we need to get a grip on this growth," Pinal County Supervisor David Snider said. "We are being challenged by our residents and our stakeholders to do business in a way that is not 'as usual.' "

READ THE MORRISON INSTITUTE'S REPORT AT http://www.morrisoninstitute.org