The Town of Wickenburg contracts an Arizona firm specializing in planning and economic development to prepare a general plan for the town. Since I subscribe to the RSS feed from the town website, I got notice of the town’s new General Plan 2025, which outlines plans for business, residents, tourism, growth and so forth.
Image – General Plan 2025 Cover Sheet – Click on the image to enlarge.
I browsed through the 168-page PDF document looking for things that may affect our lives and property, both positively and negatively (from our viewpoint). The plan includes background information on climate, topography, soils, hydrology, environmental assets (vegetation and wildlife), air quality, noise, major land ownership and demographics. It is quite thorough in its presentation of those topics.
There is also a section called “Wickenburg Planning Vision.” The vision recognizes Wickenburg’s desire to become a strong, sustainable community that is diverse in economic and employment opportunities, attractive to new employers and businesses, yet faithful to its historic and natural assets.
As I skimmed through the document, there were a couple of things that I note here that attracted us to Wickenburg in the first place. The town and surrounding area are largely isolated from the Phoenix urban crawl by virtue of the Vulture mountains to the south and the Wickenburg mountains to the east. The former isolates us from the I-10 corridor and the latter from the I-17 corridor. That’s all good.
The only fly in the ointment that I noticed is the proposed I-11 “Hassayampa Freeway,” that is supposed to connect I-10 and Las Vegas, which will come through Wickenburg. I don’t like that at all. The only thing about the proposal that causes me a little hope is the time frame; it will take over twelve years to get the project approved and perhaps another six years to implement it. By that time, we may not even be here.
Meanwhile, retirement is good.
