Community colleges stall
MCCCD plan for new W. Valley campuses on hold as population growth stays muted
Lionel Diaz will know it is time to build a Surprise-area community-college campus when developers start offering to buy an isolated, 90-acre patch of raw desert near Wittmann.
Diaz, however, doesn’t expect to field those calls for the Maricopa County Community College District property for five to 10 years. That’s also true for huge swaths of land the district bought in Buckeye and the Laveen area of Phoenix, said Diaz, district vice chancellor who oversees plans to build new campuses.
Before the wrenching recession, district officials had planned to ask voters next year to approve a multimillion-dollar bond issue that would pay for building three new campuses. As with dozens of master-planned communities and two regional malls planned for the West Valley, the recession put the future campuses on ice.
The downturn has stifled the projected population boom that would have brought tens of thousands of prospective students to neighborhoods near the far-flung sites.
As communities near the proposed sites wait for the economy to improve, some critics question the land purchases. One businessman doubts the population near the Surprise-area land can support a campus. When the dis-
trict bought the land, a watchdog group said the district’s population projections were too large.
The district’s goal is to stay ahead of the population, to outpace the developers, Diaz said.
“The district will try to develop a presence in an area before it really booms, before it’s big enough to support a college,” Diaz said.
The cost of waiting is minimal: The district does not pay property taxes. The open desert in Laveen and near Surprise maintains itself. The district leased the Buckeye land to a farmer.
Urgent land buys
It has been nearly a decade since voters approved a $951 million bond issue to buy the land and fund other district projects.
Today, it’s hard to recall the urgency that fueled the district’s purchase of land for new campuses. But in 2006, just before the housing market began to tank, the Maricopa Association of Governments, a regional planning agency, predicted that in a few decades, the West Valley would be home to more people than the current population of Maricopa County.
That same year, for the first time in recent memory, district officials were competing against developers in bidding wars over land. In prior years, they were able to negotiate purchases of uninhabited land with ease. But in 2006, homebuilders could not buy land fast enough. The entire West Valley appeared to be in a land rush.
District negotiators spent all of the money designated for the new campuses, about $19 million, on land. The district planned to ask voters to approve a 2014 bond proposal that would cover construction. Maricopa County voters have approved bonds every decade since at least 1984, according to district records.
The Arizona Tax Research Association, a watchdog group, opposed the 2004 bond proposal, saying that enrollment projections were bloated.
The bond passed with 76 percent of the vote.
A sparse population
The future Surprise-area campus, near 203rd Avenue and Lone Mountain Road, lies within a 43-square-mile unincorporated area that stretches west from Grand Avenue past 251st Avenue. It juts north from Jomax Road and extends past Dove Valley Road.
Surprise eventually plans to annex the area. It would be the sixth of nine planned villages when the city is built out.
Now, however, a little more than 2,000 people live there. The residents have homes on large horse properties or live in the community of Wittmann. There were plans to bring thousands of new residents to the rural swath of desert. Over the years, developers have submitted plans for eight master-planned communities, but those stalled along with the economy.
Similar issues slowed development plans near the district’s land in Buckeye and Laveen.
Nearly a decade ago, district planners predicted that the three campuses would be up and serving tens of thousands of students by 2016.
That prospect sounds laugh- able to Justin Smith, a Wittmann business owner, whose offroad-racing shop is not far from the projected Surprise-area campus. But he wishes those predictions could come true, he added.
“I think it would be great if there were a community college there,” Smith said. “Anything that brings up the perception of Wittmann as being poor and slum-ish would be great.”
But Smith has seen little new construction since the recession. Full-scale developments the size of Anthem would have to appear to offer enough students, he added.
“Wittmann is weird in that you’ve got a mansion next to a double-wide,” he said. “Those with mansions are 50 percent snowbirds, and you don’t have community-college people in those houses. The double-wide doesn’t have community-college students either.”
That does not bother the community-college planners, who like to buy land years before development, when prices are low.
When the district buys land, the purchases bring the same reaction, said district spokesman Tom Gariepy.
“Almost invariably, at the time we buy it, people will scratch their heads and say, ‘What are you doing that for?’ ”
The district bought the land for Glendale Community College North, for example, with funds from the 1994 bond program. The full campus opened on the site near Happy Valley Road and 61st Avenue in 2008.
By that time, developers were calling Diaz weekly, offering to buy the land. Today, the campus has about 5,000 students. The thought of such a large student body would have “blown you away” when the desert site was purchased, Diaz added.
MCCCD enrollment grew 47 percent between 1994 and 2004 and by 18 percent from 2002 to 2012, district figures show.