Looking back at the growth in Desert Ridge is a nostalgic journey for those who have lived in our community for some time. We’ve witnessed many changes over the past two decades – and we’ll witness even more changes in the future.
As a member of the Desert View Village Planning Committee, I recently had the opportunity to meet with fellow committee members from the five northern Phoenix villages. We organized into groups to discuss the recently updated Phoenix General Plan. Each group was given the task to identify where they felt the regional center of growth should be in the North Phoenix area. Among the forty attendees, the answer was nearly unanimous: Desert Ridge.
Over the coming decades, Desert Ridge is destined to be the regional center for employment, retail, commercial, industrial and residential growth in North Phoenix. This growth will bring both opportunities and challenges and it’s critical that we proactively prepare for these changes today.
The Desert Ridge Board of Directors has been working on a strategic plan to identify our current and future challenges, define priorities and create a plan to address them. We need roads, retail services, commercial development, schools, parks, sports fields and recreational amenities. Maintaining and improving our quality of life is important to us all, but it isn’t going to happen on its own.
The good news is that we have already made significant progress. A new dog park is currently being engineered off of Black Mountain Boulevard. This project will start construction in January of 2017 and will be part of a larger 60 acre master plan that may include sports fields, a pump track for bicycles, trail heads into Reach 11 and basketball courts.
City officials are also seriously considering completing Deer Valley Road West of Black Mountain Boulevard to Cave Creek Rd. This project would cost the City of Phoenix an estimated $6 million dollars and would be built at the same time the roadway for the new Sky Crossing project is developed on the Northwest Corner of Deer Valley Road and Black Mountain Boulevard.
We’ve made substantial progress, but we need your help to reach our community’s goals. We need your participation and support at community meetings that will shape our future and bring important infrastructure and recreational amenities into our neighborhoods. Please make a point to attend public meetings and our monthly board meetings the fourth Wednesday of each month at 6:00 pm, as we continue to discuss these issues.
Together we can make Desert Ridge the most desirable community in Arizona! I look forward to achieving our community goals – and seeing you in the neighborhood.
Doug Dickson
President
Desert Ridge Community Association
