Planning Commission Unanimously Approves Cloud Cap Battery Storage Rezone and Monteverde/Terra Vallis Master Plan—Establishing Framework for Second-Largest U.S. Master Community

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right if I can get everyone to take their seats please Thank you Seats please I would like to welcome everyone. I call this meeting to order. Will you join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Madam Secretary, will you please take the roll. Chair Burton. Present. Commissioner Puppy. Here. Commissioner Ragsdale. Commissioner Cupsick. Here. Vice Chair DiMacio. Here. Commissioner Bassler. Here. Commissioner Truppiano. Here. Alternate Hester. Here. Alternate Manual. Here. We have alternate Hester Cedar. Here. I'm seated for District 2. Thank you very much. Next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from October 13th, 2026, Planning and Zoning Commission regular meeting.

May I have a motion to approve the minutes? I will motion to approve the minutes for October 13th, Planning and Zoning meeting. I'll second that. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. On to the good stuff. Regular agenda. Item 3A, cloud cap energy storage rezone, case number PLZZ260012. Public hearing and request that the Planning and Zoning Commission recommend approval to the City Council of rezoning approximately 57.4 acres, subject to conditions A through H.

This Mandy Woods principal planner will be presenting. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Mandy Woods. I'm a principal planner here with development services at the city. Um, and tonight I'm going to be presenting cloud cap energy storage rezone, which is case PLZ Z 26 dash 0012. For just a brief project overview, the applicant for this is in Venergie on behalf of the owner of Verado Energy Center LLC.

The location, which I will show in more detail on the following slides, is approximately one-half mile west of the northwest corner of Sun Valley Parkway and 291st Avenue, and then it's immediately south of the Sun Valley substation. And this request tonight is to rezone 57.4 acres from planned community, one of our obsolete districts, to single-family residential 43, also known as R143. And as promised, the location information, here's just some site context. The site itself is vacant.

You can see on the slide the Sun Valley substation labels directly north of it. The area to the south, east, and west are all vacant. I believe there's some cattle grazing immediately to the west, but by and large this is an area that doesn't have much development. And this is just zooming in a little bit more without the labels cluttering the graphics so you can see it a little bit better.

Red outline is the site in question and it's approximately a quarter mile, maybe a little bit more off of Sun Valley Parkway. For the general plan land use designation of the property, this is currently rural and rural is an area that denotes areas that have large lot residential development in natural desert areas, agricultural areas or surrounding open space areas.

Generally speaking, development in this designation should try to retain the rural character of the area and be relatively low in density. And then I wanted to note that the area surrounding it, at least to the east and south, is actually master plan community, which corresponds to areas that are already within community master plans or CMPs.

For the zoning of this property this as I previously stated at the beginning this is planned community or PC This is without a CMP overlay So this does not have a community master plan to date And without that CMP overlay it functions kind of similarly to kind of our rural residential obsolete district And our development code section 2.9.4 recommends that any land that is zoned PC without a CMP overlay be converted in the future through a rezoning to R143, R143, which is the district that is being requested tonight, and that conversion would be deemed expressly compatible with the general plan land use, regardless of what that general plan land use is.

That said, the general plan land use is a compatible general plan land use designation with the proposed R143 district, both outlined in the development code and in the general plan. So from both angles, it is considered compatible. And then as far as surrounding zoning, there is the Sun Valley Villages 1 and 2 CMP that is to the east and the south. To the east, the land use designation that's within that. Adjacent CMP is a Commerce Park designation.

The only potential known user is another battery energy storage system user that is kind of on the northern edge of that parcel. And then to the south is an area that's denoted as high density residential land use in that CMP, but there's no users otherwise known directly adjacent to this project. For public participation, the applicant team held their neighborhood meeting on June 25th of this year.

They chose to hold it from 4 o'clock to 8 o'clock at night and they held it at Festival Foothills Elementary School at staff's recommendation, trying to get as close to the project site as reasonably possible, given how remote it is. There were no members of the general public that attended.

I did want to note that they did increase the mailing radius of their project mailing for both the neighborhood meeting as well as the hearing notice voluntarily just because it is so remote they increased it from the required 500 feet to 1500 feet. For legal notice site posting and then mailing notice that was all completed in accordance with our development code requirements more than 15 days before the hearing tonight.

And we did actually receive most recently so after the staff report was written two emails that expressed support for the project as of yesterday. So a little bit about the future development that is intended on this this parcel. I don't want to get too in the weeds because tonight is really an emphasis on just rezoning from an obsolete district to a more modern zoning district R143.

But just to give a little bit of an overview, the proposed development is Cloudcap Energy Storage, which is a battery energy storage system facility, also known as BESS. They are also going through the process right now to obtain a conditional use permit. That is because BESS is identified as a conditionally allowed use in the R143 district. So in order for them to proceed with their project, they would need to have a CUP in addition to a rezone.

However, that CUP requires an additional hearing before Planning and Zoning Commission and it cannot be approved unless the rezone itself is approved as well. They're also going through a minor subdivision process just to split the parcel. Right now it shows a split on the assessor, but they're formalizing that split through the process through the city. And then in the future, there will be an administrative site plan review process.

They haven't submitted that yet, but that will look at various things, making sure that we're considering all appropriate development standards, looking at site layout, making sure that setbacks are appropriate. We'll pay special attention to screening from right away and any potential future users of the project. We'll look at access and circulation and all of those important infrastructure considerations at that site plan stage.

And to note, as it says on the slide, the site plan would not be able to be approved unless the rezone and the CUP are approved first. For infrastructure and emergency services, as is typical, a TIA or traffic impact analysis will be required at a later stage, in this case the site plan review process.

And also as is typical the developer will be responsible for various improvements Most of those will be determined in more detail at the later stage of site plan approval and as determined by the TIA The property is serviced by city fire and police and there is no impact on local school capacity And I am coming to my final analysis slide here. It does, we do believe that the request tonight for the rezone furthers goals of the general plan.

It conforms to our development code and reviewing city departments have no objections to approval subject to the recommended conditions of approval. I wanted to note the memo that I passed out before this meeting started. There was additional conversations that occurred between city staff and the applicant team over the last week or so, two weeks, that modified some of the conditions of approval. So that reflects the most recent conditions that we have reached consensus on.

So I just wanted to make sure that that was noted that this is what should be used if a motion is made. And with that, the recommendation from staff is to conduct a public hearing and recommend approval of PLZZ 26-0012 to city council subject to conditions A through H, as noted in the memo that was passed out earlier this evening. The applicant team is here tonight, and then I am also available for questions. And thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Woods. Would the applicant like to speak?

I believe they want to, yes. We put together, oh, perfect. It's up there. Commissioners, thank you for your time tonight. My name is Isabel Zollinger. I'm a battery storage developer with Invenergy. We also have Taylor who will let you introduce yourself. Hi folks, my name is Taylor Bradshaw. I'm the development manager for our renewable portfolio here in Arizona. And we also have some of our battery storage engineers here with us tonight.

I know the focus is on land use, but if you do have technology specific questions, they are a real wealth of information and can answer anything that comes up. So I'm here to just introduce you guys to who Invenergy is. We are one of the biggest energy developers in the U.S. We do all of the technologies that you see on your screen in front of you. We started with natural gas, but we build what utilities are interested in buying, and that's everything you see up there.

In Arizona specifically, we have 16 facilities in operations and construction. 13 of those are battery energy storage. We're also a leader in operations, which means that other developers will hire us to be their boots on the ground, managing the site, working with local first responders, utilities themselves to manage those day-to-day operations. One of those sites includes Cat Claw, which you all may be familiar with.

Right now that team is 23 people and we're really excited about opportunities like CloudCap to continue growing those teams. Across the US, we have 27 projects in construction and operations and 15 years of operating experience. We are really an industry leader in this technology. There's a wealth of information at our company about how to design, build, and operate these sites.

I'll just skim through here because I know Buckeye has a couple of battery storage systems, but this illustration shows how batteries connect to the grid, And utilities like to use these systems because it helps lower costs to consumers and helps keep the lights on, keep power reliable to everybody that APS and other utilities serve. To zoom in on what's inside of a battery container, you probably guessed that it's a lot of batteries. It's also associated monitoring systems.

And the real takeaway of this slide is that there's safety equipment built into every single container that you see on the site plan. And just to zoom in again and really hit home that utilities want to buy these things because it lets them store cheap energy and send it back to consumers to keep energy bills low.

It also lets them store Pore up extra energy, so if there's an unexpectedly hot day or energy demand goes up, they can cover that peak, keep lights on, keep air conditioners on, keep maintaining that wonderful quality of life that APS supports every single day. I have a vicinity map of some Invenergy We have a lot of projects in the Buckeye area. Our El Sol project in Youngtown was operational in 2023. As I previously mentioned, Cat Claw were the third party operator.

Between those two teams, we have over 70 years of operating experience across our employees. They really know so much about these technologies. It's why other companies hire us to come in and be their day-to-day operators. Another thing I think this map shows is that Invenergy gets to take our national experience developing these systems and bring it to every single site that we put in front of planning and zoning commissions like yourself. We have experience operating in remote locations.

We have experience operating in population center. And all of that wisdom goes back into site design and operations. These are some photos from our El Sol site. What they show is that we believe in engaging with fire departments and first responders from before permitting through end of life.

Our best engineers are here today, not just for this hearing, but also from a training that they were at with Sun City Fire Department for our El Sol project, communicating the latest and greatest information to those first responders and continuing that partnership, even after the site has been in operations for many years. For Cloudcap specifically, we reached out to Buckeye FD before we even submitted for our pre-application conference.

The feedback and information we got from them is completely reflected in the site design you see in front of you, as well as your own battery ordinance, which is very clear and helpful to understand what you all are looking here. And of course, the very stringent national codes that help with design of these sites. Just to quickly touch on some of the community benefits that we expect to see as well.

To build a site like this, we would expect to see up to 200 construction jobs, as well to four to eight full-time operations staff. Those would be headquartered in Buckeye on this project site and be for the life of the project. These projects are also big investments in land and equipment and that translates into the property taxes and sales taxes that they generate. For Cloudcap we would expect over 75 million across the project lifetime.

In addition to that, we try to be very thoughtful about how we can be good neighbors and support our communities. Our local affairs manager isn't here with us today because she's representing Center for the Future of Arizona, but if you are interested in hearing more about that work, I highly encourage you to reach out. There's truly too much to talk about tonight with taking up the whole session. Mandy has done a great job summarizing entitlements.

I'm just providing some We have some context about what construction and an operation state would look like. These sites generally take about a year to construct once you have the needed permits. Um, and with that, we could see operations as early as 2029. Uh, and with that, I end on a summary slide of the request before you. Thank you all again for your time, and please let me know if there's any questions our team can answer. Thank you. Ms Puppy, question or comment?

I just have a couple of questions since you were talking a lot about the battery storage and the facilities and stuff. Um, do you know what the average battery life is for one of those? That's a good question. Um, the project lifespan is about 20 years. Um, our operations and maintenance staff will come in and do standard repairs, just how, like, you know, you do maintenance. maintenance on your dishwasher and other stuff to keep it running for its full lifetime.

But have I captured your whole question there? PRADNA PANELA- Well, indirectly, but yeah, I was just curious as to how long those last. PRADNA PANELA- Yeah, usually a couple of decades for these projects. When we build them, we enter into either a power purchase agreement with the utility, typically, and those are multi-decade contracts.

So we contractually obligated to produce power for the duration of that Sometimes with these we build in augmentation and that allows us to go for the usually 20 years for these projects sometimes a little bit more But as battery technology improves every year the length and duration of these types of batteries can extend out further Okay, thank you very much. Ms. Chester. Ms. Cuppsett. No questions, thank you. Mr. Bassler? No questions. Mr. Trippiano? Sorry, I have to ruin it.

I work for a power company, so I'm familiar with battery storage. When you build these sites nowadays, are you looking forward to the different technologies? Because I know right now it's lithium that's a big thing, there's salt technology that's coming out, things like that. Would this be prepared for future technologies like that? Yeah, right now we're permitting, assuming lithium chemistry.

We are looking at our CUP how to consider other chemistries and we could talk more about it in our planning and zoning hearing then, but our intention is to use lithium ion or, you know, better chemistry as we look to the future here. Okay, and just to make sure and understand this correctly, no matter what, this would be for Mandy, no matter what, this area has to get rezoned from PC, correct? So, we're only doing the rezone today to get compliance and then in the future for them to use.

Correct, this is just the first step rezoning and then there will be additional entitlement steps after this. Alright, thank you. Well, thank you again for letting us take the time to present.

I know we gave a little bit of extra information, but we just wanted to introduce Invenergy, if you haven't heard of us yet, and just underscore that if this is your first time hearing of us, we are an industry leader, and we've been working in Arizona for quite a few years and have over a dozen projects in the state so far. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right. Any other questions or comments from the Commission? Then I will at this time open up I'm Christina for public hearing.

I have two speaker requests. The first one is Christina found out pepper. Christina, help me out so I can say your sister's name right or your mom. I don't know who's next. But she'll love love hearing sister. So I'm Christiana Fadul Pepper and my mom is Kimberly Fadul. So I will say, Invenergy kind of took the wind out of my sails. They kind of said a lot of what I'm going to say as well, but I'm still happy to be here and speak with you all. So hello.

Good evening, chair, vice chair and commissioners. My name is Christiana Fadul Pepper, but I am resident here. I live in the Sundance community in Buckeye, but I am here tonight to ask you to support this newly proposed project, the Cloudcap Energy Storage Center. So I have lived in Western Maricopa County my entire life. And about three years ago, my husband and I decided Buckeye is a a pretty great place to set down roots.

So we bought our home, we plan on raising our family here, and we plan on living the majority, if not the rest of our lives here in this community. So I because we plan on growing our family here, I do care a lot about the future of this community. So for the last 10 years myself, I have supported smart clean energy solutions across the Western Valley. And to know that another type of project like this is coming to Buckeye is really exciting to me, and I wanted to be a part of this.

Amazing project that is coming here and get to have a say in it. So we know that our city is growing at a record pace and our summers have been brutally hot. When temperatures climb, the grid is stretched thin and we know that that is when our families, our schools, hospitals and emergency services here need our power the most. So cloud cap will help be a part of that solution.

It'll capture energy when it's cheap and abundant, hopefully from sources like solar during the day and then it will deliver it to our grid when our communities need it the most. That is a boon for public safety and for We're making Buckeye more resilient as months of extreme heat become our new normal.

This project has in energy said also will deliver a lot of really important financial benefits to the city like that $74 million economic investment that we're going to see in that tax revenue that we can help use to fund our schools, road repairs, emergency services, so many other things that we need here in the city. I also love that it's going to support more than 200 jobs at peak construction with, I think, about four to eight jobs full time Once it's operational.

I also know that safety is on a lot of our minds, especially here in the West Valley, and what we've seen at some past projects in maybe some of our other neighboring cities.

But the good news is that energy storage failure rates have dropped by 98 since 2018 and that number of projects has only grown exponentially And so this is according to an Electric Power Research Institute report So these new facilities they built to strict national fire safety codes They include early detection around monitoring and I really appreciate that they do early coordination with our local fire department and crews before a project ever comes online So for me I know that this technology is safe and I want it built in my community So Buckeye is truly where I plan to raise my family, where I plan to grow, and I want to see this place grow as well.

I want to see it have smart and reliable and safe infrastructure here that will benefit everybody who chooses to call this city their home. So I do respectfully ask that you all approve the cloud cap energy storage, move it on to the city council, and I truly thank you all for your time this evening and your consideration. Thank you. Kimberly? Sister? Sure. I'll take it. Anything to make me younger. Absolutely. So good evening, commissioners.

My name is Kimberly Fadul, mom, sister, whatever, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight. So we're both very passionate about this, obviously. I've lived in the West Valley for over 30 years after my daughter and son-in-law moved here. So did I because you know we come with the family. And it's become my city as well as Glendale. I've spent countless days hiking the Skyline Regional Park, which I absolutely love. And I visit all your local restaurants and go to the movies.

And I love their Verado area. It's just very, it's a great place away from home for me. And watching this community grow, I see the need. Okay? So given all the time my family and I have spent here, I've come to care very deeply about its future. As a teacher of special needs and an educator for 25 years, I've spent a lot of the time thinking about the kind of world that we're going to be leaving behind for future generations.

I believe that the reliable, affordable, and clean energy has to be a part of that future, which is why I'm asking you all to very much consider moving forward with the CloudCap Energy Storage Center with the first step of the zoning. When I think about how amazing clean energy is, I think about how battery energy storage can help do things like keep our lights on during, you know, the summer months and when we depend upon our air conditioning, which we all did dreadfully this year, right?

It can also support cleaner air for our children, seniors, and neighbors with health concerns, while helping conserve the water in the desert region, where we know that every drop matters now. With the amount of rapid growth that's happening here in Buckeye that I've actually seen happen, and in the neighboring cities throughout the western Maricopa County, we need as much reliable power as we can get.

And we need that power to be generated in a way that benefits our communities instead of hurting them. So I do urge you to be open to the future and to support the CloudClapp because our communities desperately need it. And I'm grateful to have gotten the opportunity to speak to you along as well tonight, along with my daughter, Christiana. And it's, we're all here advocating for clean energy in our communities across the West, excuse me, across the West Valley.

Thank you so much for your time and for your service and your thoughtful work and we appreciate you all for being here tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. Commissioners, do you have any further questions or comments? Not. I'm going to close this. Public hearing. Thank you. I was stuck. May I have a motion to recommend approval to counsel of case number PLZZ-26-0012 subject to conditions A through H.

Chair, I'll make a motion to approve case PLZZ-26-0012 to the city council, subject to conditions A through H. I'll second that. Moved and second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. On to the next.

Agenda Item 3B Monteverde Wolf Multifamily Major Community Master Plan C&P Amendment Case Number PLZZ Public hearing and request that the Planning and Zoning Commission recommend approval to city council of a major amendment removing approximately 14 acres subject to conditions A through I Mr Banda Hello. Good evening. I always like to say happy taco Tuesday because it is Tuesday and I think about tacos all the time. But I am filling in for Mr. Miller this evening.

He's a gentleman from Wisconsin, so it's a very important evening for him. And I'm here to fill in and give you guys a little bit more about this Monteverde Parcel 1.11A. Chair, I think the summary in and of itself, it's a very simple project we're looking at doing. It is in the Monteverde Committee Master Plan. Let me go ahead and advance this a little bit. The applicant is Mr. Jeff Bliley. He's not excited that Joe's not here. He wants he would rather have Joe over me but it's okay.

I've been working with Jeff for many years and this major amendment to Monteverde CMP is generally located on the northeast corner of Lower Buckeye and Apache Road. It's a site of approximately 14 acres. It is a site that is highlighted in red. It is just generally east of the Yunker High School.

What the case simply is requesting to do, oh sorry I'm gonna give more information, the general plan as you guys mentioned before is within the Monte Verde committee master plan and this master plan has a variety of different mixed uses, different things and as this property is developed from the Walton group we've had needs to make changes over the years.

This is one of those such changes to accommodate different growth, different things, different products, different development standards and so that's what we're gonna be talking about just briefly here this evening. So what we're doing here is going to do a mixed-use land use designation, but the big difference here, I'm sorry, I guess he's got more slides on where it's located. So this is Monteverde, guys.

It extends from on the west, from Miller all the way to Apache, not Apache, to Watson on the east. So it is two miles across. It is a substantial project of approximately 2,600 acres. We are going to be talking about 1.11a, which is approximately 33 acres. Only 14 of those acres, or Section A of this, is actually being amended this evening. This is really the gist of what's being asked for this evening.

It's increasing the density of this project from 18 units per acre to 20 units per acre, giving an additional 26 additional units on site. Now, the reason why there's a request is that there is a concept plan in place. So this concept is to move a project forward. So this rezone is contingent on moving forward a concept plan that is in the process of being reviewed by staff.

So what they're looking at doing is creating an additional density of 18 units to 20 and also creating development standards. So there's development standards that were never in place yet. The request is going to reduce parking and it's tied to a project of one stall per studio, one bedroom units, and one and a half stalls per two bedroom units. The reason why they're requesting that, they say it's justified with a parking study that compares analogous multifamily developments.

So we, if you guys are familiar, Sidney on Center was an analogous development where we actually have a one-bedroom unit with one parking and one and a half for additional if it was a one-bedroom or two-bedroom unit. The project is also creating a substantial number of parking spots, bicycle areas. So they actually have short-term bicycle parking spots, so eight short-term and 115 long-term bicycle parking spots.

So this is taking into account from a market analysis, what they have done is to see what they would be using for parking and what their users are actually using for bicycles and other modes of travel. So the other stuff that was actually being discussed in here too is creating internal sidewalks of four feet. So that's not the six foot.

The six foot is a typical requirement for project, but because this is a self-contained project, what they're looking to do is have a standard of four feet for their internal circulation. Let me go ahead and move forward. The final thing is on the building design. What they are proposing too is a building design is to have studio or one bedroom units may omit balconies, however, no less than 85% of the units have a balcony. The wall pane projections may be a minimum of two feet deep.

Now, I know there's So we're looking at how we had to look at things like that. The park areas, the major park areas, where they're going to be. Now in concept, we're looking at it briefly from a larger view and that's where that three-tier planning approach comes into place. PAD creates this is what we're going to do. The village plan is going to give us more specifics and the development units is basically the nuts and bolts, how we're implementing everything within those layers.

So, talking briefly about parks, we're looking at about 1700 acres of parks, so it's 5% of the overall site. And for an example, that residents will always have access to parks within 10 minutes. If you guys have toured Floreo, you'll have to see these beautiful parks. In fact, I said, I just want to go make pizza on one of these places, bring out a pizza oven and play bocce, you have bocce courts. They have these things that are all out there that integrate the parks into the community.

So it's not just like, hey, this is a leftover This is providing great parks within this community as a plan from the get-go. The open space area is also being discussed. 18% of each development unit site must be preserved as open space, qualifying natural features, washes, hillsides, and wildlife corridors.

The key takeaway from these slides I just presented is that infrastructure, public services will be coordinated with development with specific needs addressed through future planning and agreements. As we do each of these development units, we move forward with these plats, with these site plans, we're making sure we adhere to the standards that were being created through the PAD. The public participation, like I said, it's still ongoing.

Their coordination with the school district, coordination with the White Tanks Conservancy, those still are ongoing coordinations that are going on. Again, it still has part of the coordination. But the neighborhood meeting was held at this welcome center, the welcome house in Florioa at Terra Vallis on June 3rd. There were a few members of the general public, there was no opposition. And all the public hearings, including the enhanced notice, was done.

So the enhanced notice was the 500 foot notification. Because that notification doesn't reach out to very many people because of the Scales project, they did reach out to adjacent communities, Sun City Festival, Tartesso were reached out to the the the CMPs were reached out to as well, the CMPs, the HOAs. Sorry, my brain goes to planning, not to not the consumer level. So that has been going on. So the next thing I want to talk about was kind of the analysis.

This is the last slide I'm trying to keep as brief as I can. This is consistent with the general plan. It promotes the different general plan goals and policies. I broke it down and found In fact, the number of iterations of this report that was written for the PAD was extensive, going through making sure it touches a lot of things because it's a big project. It's a comprehensive framework. It requires phase development. It's not something we'll have answers to for everything right now.

And like I said, we took Floreo, which we thought was a really well done project, and made it even better here. So we actually are making changes, small things that we were noticing when we're using, you don't find out what you have until you start using it with Floreo, made those changes here, and they are currently amending Floreo to match that too. And we're talking about managed flexibility, coordinated growth, and continued city oversight. And I want to state that again.

This is a big project. This creates flexibility, but the city actually maintains oversight throughout. We can say, hey, hey, we can raise a flag. This is what the PAD says, this is what you need to adhere to, and they are part of that agreement. So with that, I have the two recommendations up there and the applicant has a brief presentation as well if you'd like to see it. We'd love to see it. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners.

For the record, Bill Lally, Tiffany and Bosco, the applicant tonight. Sean did a great job. I don't want to go over a lot of what he did. I do have a number of slides. I may focus on just a couple other items, but Sean has been a great partner through the entire process, as has the entire team. And we started this the first time with Floreo.

The whole entire concept of rewriting the PAD and rewriting the CMP to have the level of detail that goes into this document is something that Sean worked on starting three years ago, three and a half years ago. And he is a blessing to us Sean took Floreo and made it better with Terra Ballas The document it in your packet it 600 pages It's a big document. It's a large document. And so it, Sean did focus on this, but I think it's important to reiterate the coordination with state land.

You know, state land has densities that were assigned to their parcels, these three squares, years ago, starting in 2002. And so they have an entitlement on those lands today. That entitlement is going to stay exactly the same. And they won't sell it until this land reaches its premium value. That's kind of the constitutional mandate. Um, we will be watching, coordinating and working with state land along the way. But those three parcels, um, nothing negative happened.

And honestly, probably only positive bringing development closer to it, advocating for the I 11 only allows the state land parcels to be more valuable. Sean went through this as well. 30 something thousand acres, 35,000 acres is like building a whole new city. The likelihood is we're talking 100 years worth of development. 100 years. It's going to be bigger than Tempe.

It's likely to have twice the amount of employment that's in Tempe if you kind of allocate a real acreage for ASU, this is going to have everything. It's going to have education. It's going to have high tech. And in 50 years from now, we're going to have flying cars, right? You know, we're going to have to really plan for the future.

And so the village concept that Sean has blessed and worked with us to design has really allowed for, you know, a three to four to five thousand acre village, which is as big as Floreo and as big as some of the other master plans to come in with chunks along the way. And so when you look at the big The yellow square compared to Belmont to the south and a lot of the other master plan communities. This area up here is going to have a massive impact on the growth of Buckeye.

Probably 800,000 folks are going to live up in this area. Pretty remarkable. Sean went through that. This is another slide that I think is important because where we start off is, you know, what is the developable area? The big blue line going through is I-11. Floreo is our normal front door to Sun Valley Parkway.

Massive washes throughout the project have allowed us to look at those washes and make sure that those washes are used correctly, meaning that they're going to be open space, They're going to be drainage set aside and they're going to be wildlife corridors.

As Sean indicated, we've been working with the White Tanks Conservancy, White Tanks Mountain Conservancy for many years, probably 12 to 20 meetings with them over the last couple years, just trying to better finalize sort of wildlife corridors across the property. And it's going to mirror a lot of the natural washes. Sean talked about the villages. This is just a little bit more of a drill down on kind of the villages. And a little bit more of the backstory.

We have villages named and we may go in sequence from Floreo being the first village and jumping across the river and village number two would be the obvious continuation because you're going to bring utilities across. But if I 11 gets accelerated, Howard Hughes is also talking to large employers, large users, that would want to be located, you know, in a large employment area.

So not only is there, um, a new city's worth of residential units approved with this, there is 65 million square feet of non-residential. So that's probably more than all of that's in Tempe today. So we're going to have a city that has diverse land uses. And if we can land the next TSMC, it's going to go here. This is another thing that Sean talked about, which is the roadway network.

When we map out the washes and then we go to the roads, we figure out how are we getting all of these cars, 130,000 units. Jomex Road to the north is going to be critical. Accessing onto the freeway is going to be critical. Jomex will end up connecting over to Grand Avenue and Surprise.

And so all of that forethought and working closely with anisa, our team, our SIP tech traffic team probably met weekly, if not every other week with anisa, trying to drill down into, you know, it's hard to say how do you plan for 100 years worth of growth? Well, we have to give it our best shot today.

And so we were really challenged and trying to figure out what are the expectations for at least the major roads and the freeways to accommodate this growth and then put a process in place to drill down on each village.

for the TIA This is just a little bit of what in the PAD related to the wildlife corridors I worked on a lot of master plans and none have gone to the extensive amount of research coordination with local groups to make sure that wildlife corridors are done thoughtfully There 13 pages in the PED that talk to wildlife corridor design standards and expectations This one a little bit hard to read you know but basically the need to get the animals from the white tanks uh through our development into the mountains to the west of us into the north of us And so the ways to do that is to utilize different corridors and combine different corridors so that happens.

And so there's not another master plan developer who's put this much thought into that kind of accommodation. Again, here's sort of the details, kind of mapping out what these corridors look like, how wide they are, how they're going to be built and designed. It was really drilling down into the nitty-gritty of how a hundred years worth of protection is going to be accommodated. I just lost. Okay, there we go.

Again, I know Sean talked about this, but we have a lot of exhibits, representative imageries and expectations. Sean talks about accountability with great power, great responsibility. So there's a lot of accountability in this in this PAD that staff wanted to have in there that really talks to, okay, if you're going to show us this is what is going to happen, we're going to add 10 pages that talk about specifics of that.

And so some of these exhibits just really talk through some of the representative imagery of some of the parks and open space. And I think given the area where it's at, it's got to have a substantial parks and open space and trails plan. It's got to have a mixture of employment and residential. It's got to have the schools. We've been working closely with the school district for better part of a couple years. Sean mentioned the open house.

It was a little bit of a nothing burger, but it was right there at We invited everyone around to come and view. A lot of people have already toured Floreo. So this is just kind of an extension of what Howard Hughes already does. And so they can kind of get a flavor of what to expect by just driving through Floreo today. Schools is a big thing.

Um, we have been coordinating with the superintendent and the school district for about a year, trying to support them in any way we can in terms of trying to provide funding necessary and needed funding that the school district absolutely needs. I think Sean mentioned if the bond passes next week, then it's amazing. We're going to be able to locate different schools and Tartesso and Floreo and we're going to have a great start.

If it doesn't, we're still going to be there partnering with the district to make sure that public schools have a voice and public schools have a place in our community. So I think I can't underscore how much effort Howard Hughes has worked with the school district trying to to make sure that they have a viable future. This is just a little summary of what we just talked about and most of it Sean covered, but happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Lally.

Commissioner's questions, comments? Mr. Trippiano. Yes, I got a comment. If you want to bring back up the road plan. Sean, can I get back to my...okay, here we go. I don't know what happened here. Yeah, I'll go. Oh, here we go. Okay. Yeah. The transportation plan? Yeah, the transportation plan. There we go. Right there. Okay, the way I see it right now, looking at this transportation plan, is we're going to have, I live in C in the hills, which I call the biggest cold sack in this area.

There's only one way in and one way out, and that's what we're looking at right now, because Bell Road would be a good second exit, but it's not part of this plan here. What until in the Air State 11 who knows when it's going to get built? What do we do about making it into an air cul-de-sac? Mr Chair and Commissioner Trippiani, I mentioned flying cars so I think that's going to come. No, I'm just kidding. That's our only solution is flying cars. No, it's a great question.

As I indicated, we have a master TIA. The green roads that you see there have extensions going outside of our property and connecting in the city's streets classification map. The city has done a grid planning how the entire community is going to connect. We're showing it here in green because it's what we're showing you on our property. All of those roads are going to leave. Now, the obvious question is, well, who's going to build the roads that are off your property?

They may not be there yet That neighbor next door may not do that At every level and at every village we have to work with your team and come up with a traffic plan that works And if it fails for the reasons you mentioned which is too big of a cul and that you know we overloading Sun Valley Parkway then we have to then accommodate it elsewhere And so this is a framework that has to be implemented by village and I know Anissa probably can add to that but it not that it not been thought of It's a hundred years worth of development and we're giving the best guess.

I-11 will be there. Joe Max will probably be a major reliever on the north side. And you're right, Sun Valley Parkway can only take so much. Well it's not only Sun Valley Parkway, it's just, Sienna Hills, we were told for years we were going to get an air exit to McDowell. And now we've been told it's not going to happen at all. And I just don't want this happening to this area because it's a lot bigger and I just I feel it's going to create a cul-de-sac no matter how far along. Right.

Understood. Okay. Thank you. Chair, Commissioner, if we may, I think so, Gerard, but Gerard actually has. We've gone through this extensively as staff. staff. So this is a question, you know, Siena Hills, Ahwatukee, I think is the largest cul-de-sac in the state of Arizona, but we'll call it Siena Hills. But I'll let Anissa answer it more specifically. Hello Chair, Commissioners.

We did review all of this extensively and while you have very valid concerns, I do know that the Howard Hughes team is very well versed and working on solutions for the northern portion along the Jomax alignment. And also the Surprise Master Plan is also working on the solution of the arterial streets that travel east and west that will meet up with the roads that are in Buckeye.

So a lot of this, while it seems like it's off the Howard Hughes property and the Terrabellus property, it's already being thought about when we probably won't need the roads for 30 to 40, 50, 100 years. So we are looking at all of those solutions. While I do understand your concerns about Santa Hills Parkway, me too, but we are forward thinking on this. and the Howard Hughes team is as well. And then I got another question about the PAD itself.

I've written there that in the non-residential areas, GATA centers could be put in. Will we as a commission get to look at that before they go in? Because data centers, I think they're great stuff, but I think we need to slow down on them and catch up. Chair, Commissioner Piano, I've been watching the Instagram reels about them as well. Data centers is a big thing that was discussed. In fact, we actually created a subsection of this specifically and extensively looking at data centers.

There has been no discussion of data centers at this point in time in this property itself, but we actually did an analysis valley-wide and actually have more extensive requirements than anywhere else in this particular development. So the way we go back to that whole idea of the flexibility of the development, the idea here is that it will be done at a staff level review. It will be an administrative review for any type of data centers to move forward.

I know our manager, Ken Galica, has more to add on that. Yeah, Commissioner Giubiano, so we did work with Mr. Lally and his team to create that section of requirements. Those are really intended to limit particularly water usage associated with the data center. There's also significant, very specific requirements on noise and vibration types of things that we don't have in place for the rest of the city yet.

I say yet because I think in the near future you're going to see the city adopt a policy that will apply to data centers citywide, which would limit water and would specify noise and other types of impacts where they would be acceptable. So in many ways, I would say the Terra Vallis PAD is kind of setting, I'm not saying our policy is going to match it exactly, but is setting kind of the stage for what we plan to do citywide.

The trade-off for that, for establishing all these very strict requirements within the PAD is no, it will not need to come back to you to planning and zoning commission or council at a later date. I just, I'm just, well, at the Verado, they can pretty much get away with what they want. And I just want to make sure this comes back before someone into the city. So it's not just the developer doing it without the city involved.

Yeah, so Chair Commissioner Trippiano, I'm glad you actually mentioned about the flexibility. Bill Lally actually kind of explained a little bit about talking about design elements. I said this when we did 4AO and I'm not trying to knock a development. Verado is an amazingly beautiful development in its own right. We took what we learned lessons learned from Verado and we're making this, for a while we joked internally, it's like a Verado 2.0.

In fact, it's some of the same staff that created Verado are involved in this project too. It's a 2.0 in many respects in the sense that we have the right ownership, the right player, Howard Hughes, willing to be flexible to development, create very much extensive design standards. So the one thing I'd love to do is do design reviews. I'm a design guy, it's what I do. I have so many design standards here that hold them to a higher standard, and it has that checks and balances.

So once again if they are not adhering to they have an entire process. They have an architecture review committee, they have different committees, they have different the Terra Valis, I forgot the name of the group that does the Terra Valis reviews too. They have an extensive basically its own internal governing board and the checks and balances for us as we go through it. So we're reviewing it and what it is that's going to be in compliance with that PAD.

So having those standards in place for I'm sorry, battery energy storage is on my mind. Having the standards in place for all the different types of development as we're moving forward, industrial, residential, commercial, it's all laid out, spelled out in this PAD. And that's why they have that flexibility. And that's why we talk about great, with great power comes great responsibility.

And I joke about that, but there is definitely checks and balances put in place with the different levels of the PAD. I'm good with that as long as it's getting reviewed by the city and not in all the considerations of where it's at and everything. Thank you. Mr. Bassler. First of all, this is an amazing PAD. I'm blown away by the amount of detail that is in there, the amount of planning that is in there. It is such a tremendously good planning document moving forward. Two positive observations.

I looked at Annex E, which is the education one. You guys have gone over the top in looking at the educational needs and projecting those down the road, and I very much appreciate the attention that's drawn to that.

The second is I appreciate the fact that you extended the reach out area Sometimes we don reach out far enough You extended it I think that was a very positive thing So I look forward to this moving ahead Won be here 100 years I won be here 100 years This thing goes forward but you got the detail in there to move it forward and that great Thank you I was born in a corner over here in the building. I plan on seeing it there, so no worries.

Since you guys are communicating with everybody involved, is there any kind of update on the I-11 through this section? Well, I could bring Greg Fitchett up from Howard Hughes and he could give you about a two-hour long speech about the logistics of it. Thank you. I have no further questions. He's wearing a lapel pin tonight that says I-11 on it, so he's going to promote it everywhere we go.

No, there's extensive communication happening in Washington and at the state level to advance the planning. It goes from Vegas to Mexico, so it's a pretty big thing. So we're trying to focus on the area that makes sense, Vegas to I-10, and try to see if we can get that thing going quicker than probably the needs south. And so obviously if you if you look up there, you see the purple line. The purple line is the magic line to attract any major user.

You know, the next TSMC, ASU West, you know, some big huge thing that would go out there. Um, and so we're efforting probably more time now towards the I-11. I know Greg spends a lot of time back east trying to push the ball. So I give you a two hour drill down or just trust us. It's probably the most important thing. I appreciate that. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you for the two-hour thing. Okay. Ms. Cuppsett. No questions. No questions. Ms. Puppy. No questions. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right. At this time, Do we have any speaker requests? We do not, Chair. Thank you. And all the audience looks to be... All right. We'll open this public hearing and I'll close the public hearing. May I have a motion to recommend approval to council of case number PLZZ-25-0013, subject to conditions A through Q. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve PLZZ-25-0014 with conditions A through Q. I'll second it. It's been moved and second. All those in favor? Aye. Excuse me.

That number was read incorrectly, wasn't it? Can we check on that? It appears to be 1-3. It is 1-3. I got excited when I typed it when we were doing our staff meeting. Okay. Add that to my... So we need to amend the All right Chair I make a correction to my amendment or request for approval PLZZ with conditions A through Q I will second that It's been moved and second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Let's go right into another hearing. To the second item. The CMPA item.

Yes, please. A separate public hearing is required and then we'll take another motion. Thank you. Let's see. Open this up for public hearing. Close for public hearing. May I have a motion to recommend approval to council case number PLZZ-26-0011. Chair, I'd like to make the motion to approve to mayor and city council the major master plan CMP amendment number two case number PLZ Z-26-0011. All seconds. It's been moved in second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you for your time. No, thank you, Sean. All right. Comments from the public. Do we have any speaker requests? We have no requests, Chair. Thank you so very kindly. All right, moving on. Planning Manager report, Mr. King Galica. Yes, thank you, Chair. Interesting. How would you and the Commission have liked to approve the Golden Gate Bridge or Disneyland? Both of those are the number two in their categories.

The Golden Gate Bridge is the second longest suspension bridge in the United States. Disneyland is the second largest theme park in the United States. Just recommended approval of the second largest master plan community in terms of units in the entire United States. So kind of a historic moment. Pretty crazy to think of. Buckeye in those terms. So getting a little emotional. Pretty neat.

Other than that, we do have items coming up quite a bit, quite a few items, two items for next meeting, three items for the following meeting. We might get a break the first meeting in December, but then we have an item scheduled for the second meeting in December. I will get with you each offline to see if the meeting on 1222, which we do tentatively have something penciled for, is going to work. Obviously that's close to the holidays.

I want to make sure that we at least have a quorum here for that Last thing I wanted to do tonight was introduce Bennett Folk Bennett is the planning division new intern Started three weeks ago or maybe a month ago now He comes to us as a graduate of Arizona State and I was going to ask Bennett to come on up here and introduce himself He doesn have to go for very long but just to tell tell the commission about himself Like I said, I'm graduate from ASU about three years ago.

I've been working in government for the past two years as a judicial clerk with the Maricopa County white tank under Judge Heidi Owens. It's excited to be here with you guys now and learn from the planning department and not make as many mistakes as Sean. I was gonna tell you that now. Stay away from him. Other than that, again, excited to be here and hopefully get to present in front of you guys at some point once Ken and the rest of the staff are ready. Thank you, Bennett. Welcome back.

And again, stay away from Sean. Sean bad. Alright. There's nothing else. Current events? I was at the Halloween carnival on Saturday. It was great. There was a lot more vendors this year than last time went. And I really enjoyed it. Hopefully a lot of local businesses or local charities made some money on that one. I know the Friends of the Library did good. I stopped by there a couple times. And there are two other things that I saw.

Well, one over the weekend on Sunday I went to the district at the Rado Marketplace. If you guys haven't been there, go. I went to see them. It's so quiet right now. I almost fell asleep there on the chairs. It's that quiet. So I really like that. And the other thing was I saw a video today with Councilman Barry in it, announcing that on Monroe and 4th Street, or 4th Avenue, I can't remember. I can't remember. They're redoing the old hotel there and the guy has big plans for it.

And this is really exciting. This is all going back to downtown special area plan. It all comes back to it. With the plan that was put in place a couple years ago. If the person that owns this building now completes this plan, we're going to be hopping downtown. And I really like how Buckeye is going to grow its downtown. It's really good and I really appreciate someone taking that old building and gonna make it great again. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Alright. There's nothing else.

Good night to all and to all a good night. Thank you.