SEDONA — Mark TenBroek posed for a photo in front of a construction site on Forest Road. It’s a spot he chose, reflective of his career as a civil engineer. The city is building a 270-space parking garage there, a large, expensive project, he said.
According to TenBroek, continued development has driven residents away as living expenses increase. That’s one of the reasons he and other Sedona residents are appealing the approval of a new resort development just a few minutes outside uptown.
TenBroek is a member of Sedona Residents Unite, one of two organizations appealing the city’s approval of the Oak Creek Heritage Lodge, a resort planned for development on a plot of land along Oak Creek.
The project was approved this April. Opponents claim the development would cause environmental harm to the area, create additional traffic and would be inconsistent with the city’s development guidelines.
Oak Creek Heritage Lodge is planned for an 11.5-acre site just south of uptown Sedona. The space is open now except for several homes and historic buildings. The project’s developer, R.D. Olson Development, purchased these homes and plan to incorporate the historic buildings into the resort.
The project would include 70 rooms and amenities including a pool, restaurant, spa, meeting space and employee housing. Like the nearby L’Auberge de Sedona resort, the resort would be made up of several clusters of lodging buildings with separate structures for amenities.
R.D. Olson did not respond to The Republic's multiple requests for comment.
TenBroek said Sedona Residents Unite is pragmatic and understands the right to develop, but said R.D. Olson is “pushing it,” in terms of the size of the structures as compared with what’s outlined in city development guidelines.
Critics say the hotel violates city guidelines
The site is located in the Schnebly Community Focus Area, nearly 100 acres of private land with a set of development goals and guidelines. The Schnebly area calls for development to retain rural character, support nonresidential uses and protect the river environment along Oak Creek.
The Oak Creek site also falls within the Oak Creek Heritage District, a new zoning designation meant to give landowners development options “more suitable to the area’s unique features.” The Schnebly Community Focus Area permits lodging like small designer hotels, bed and breakfasts, cottages, bungalows and cabins.
Opponents claim the Oak Creek Heritage Lodge does not fit these specifications.
“What they’re attempting to do is build a number of two-story, glass-fronted large structures,” TenBroek said. “It’s really changing the character significantly.”
He said he would be OK with a development that utilized cabins and cottages as outlined in the Schnebly Community Focus Area.
Carrie Meyer, the city's planning manager, said the development fits the character of Sedona and was compliant with all sections of the city’s land development code.
How development can affect a riparian area
R.D. Olson outlines what it calls sustainable operations the company plans to implement, including the use of solar panels and electric shuttle buses to help mitigate traffic congestion. The development aims to preserve the majority of large native trees on the site and become LEED certified, a benchmark used to rate buildings based on energy efficiency and environmental benefit.
But residents are concerned about the effect the development will have on the region’s ecosystem.
The region is riparian, an ecosystem located along a body of water. These riparian areas are rare.
“The only place in the Sonoran Desert that supports trees is ecosystems along rivers, for the most part,” said Heather Bateman, a wildlife ecologist and professor of ecology at Arizona State University. These ecosystems have high species diversity and support complex habitats, she said.
Large sycamore trees line the creek and the site that would become the Oak Creek Heritage Lodge. The plot is dotted with nearly a thousand trees of varying species and sizes. According to the Sedona Residents Unite appeal, the region is home to deer, javelina, coyote and bobcat that depend on access to Oak Creek. A new development could block their access to the river.
“It’s a source of water year round, even when things are dry,” TenBroek said.
Developers estimated the completed resort would consume 21,600 gallons of water per day. According to the second appeal by residents of Bear Wallow Lane, R.D. Olson doesn’t specify how much surface water the development will draw from the creek. However, public documents show the developer filed a claim for surface water rights with the Arizona Department of Water Resources, listing an annual use of 28.2 acre-feet from Oak Creek per year, or just under 9.2 million gallons.
“Generally, anything that would be de-watering the stream has the potential to affect the vegetation that grows along the stream,” Bateman said. “If we lose these large structural trees, then there’s a whole suite of wildlife we would lose as well.”
Opponents also took issue with the resort’s planned construction of decks that hang out over the floodway and claim these structures could prevent light from reaching riparian habitat.
The Bear Wallow appeal claims the developer’s plan to provide a publicly accessible trail along the creek would invite overuse of the area. Animals sometimes shift the times they’re active to avoid interacting with humans, which can cause complications like making a species more vulnerable to a predator, Bateman said.
But access to nature is important and the issue is nuanced, she said.
“We know that access to nature increases human well-being,” she said. “People have lower anxiety levels, lower depression levels … and when people have experiences in nature it can translate into positive outcomes for, say, supporting specific species or supporting the conservation of something like riparian areas.”
Part of the rationale to encourage nonresidential development within the Oak Creek Heritage District was to avoid carving up the land with the development of a single-family subdivisions, said Meyer, the planner.
Bateman said less fragmented habitat is better for species, but it's unclear if a hotel or a residential development would cause less fragmentation.
Affordable housing: As housing costs skyrocket, Sedona will allow workers to live in cars. Residents aren't happy
Concerns about the floodplain, traffic
Sedona Residents Unite also took issue with the resort’s placement along the creek. The development would be built up to the edge of the creek's floodway, an area where flooding would be significant in a flood event. The resort would be built in a 100 year floodplain, a region with a 1% chance of flood recurrence in any given year.
TenBroek said moving structures out of this 100-year floodplain would be a first step. This is where most of the lodging is set to be built.
Both appeals raised concerns about how much traffic would be generated by the development.
Traffic from a hotel might actually produce less than traffic from a residential development, Meyer said. Hotel guests might leave in the morning and come back at night while residents come and go more during the day. The site is also within walking or biking distance of uptown tourist attractions, she said.
Sedona Residents Unite argues this is only true for the “cabins and cottages” type of development outlined in the Schnebly Community Focus Area, which the organization believes has not been followed in the Oak Creek Heritage Lodge.
“We’re very concerned this development with 70 hotel rooms, it’s going to be a wedding venue, it’s going to have a 7,000 square foot restaurant in it, it’s just going to bring a lot of congestion,” TenBroek said. Traffic could become a safety concern if it blocks emergency vehicles.
These kinds of appeals have happened more recently, said Meyer, the planner. Sedona doesn’t have much vacant land within city limits, so new development projects are often close to residents.
This continued development is pushing people out of Sedona, said TenBroek, who has spent part of the year in the city for around a decade.
On the other side of the creek, construction crews are working on the 270-space parking garage and a new extension to a roadway.
“That’s kind of what Sedona seems to be about these days,” he said.
Sedona City Council will hear the appeals on Tuesday and make a final decision on the project.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Some Sedona residents oppose Oak Creek Heritage Lodge project
