Terrell Hannah and his family enjoy living in Tartesso, a master-planned community in northwest Buckeye. But when he needs to fill up his car or get a gallon of milk, he does wish that it came with basic city amenities.
Like a gas station or a grocery store. The nearest gas station is 15 minutes away; the nearest Walmart, 15 minutes away; the nearest Costco, 20 minutes away.
Hannah and his wife also have two young children and drive them about 25 minutes to school near downtown Buckeye. On top of that, Hannah has a 35- to 45-minute commute to Luke Air Force, where he works.
Hannah, who moved into the community in 2022, said he likes the residential feel.
“One of the attractive features of that neighborhood is that it’s away from all of the heavy industry that is really coming up at every corner in Phoenix,” Hannah said.
Realtor Martin Partida has been a Tartesso resident since 2020. He and his family moved from Phoenix because they wanted to live somewhere quieter, and Tartesso fit the bill. Partida said he also needs to drive about 15 minutes to get to the nearest grocery store or gas station.
A big frustration among Tartesso residents has been the pace of development. The community now has about 10,000 residents and 3,400 houses but so few amenities, they say.
Many residents feel Tartesso has been left out as other areas of the city develop more quickly.
“When we compare what we have to other communities that have been developed like Verrado, it just seems unbalanced. We’re not sure why it’s taking so long to get things moving out here,” Partida said.
Partida said he also hopes for a high school to be built. Currently, Tartesso’s schools only go to the fifth grade. It also would be nice to have a recreational center in Tartesso, Partida said.
Residents also hope for coffee shops, jobs
Cameron James has lived in Tartesso since 2009. At this point, James said he and other residents are used to commuting for work and stopping at places like Costco on the way home.
“You get used to it after about a year. I mean, we feel spoiled now because we have food trucks,” James said.
James said he understands why the community needs more rooftops before commercial development follows.
Paige Stein, who works in the hospitality industry in Goodyear, has lived in Tartesso for about four years after moving from from Festival Foothills neighborhood, also in Buckeye. Stein said she and her family always have preferred to live in places that are more isolated.
Stein said the most important thing to her is that more jobs come to Tartesso for the people who live there, particularly young people still at home with their parents who don’t have the option to move. Stein currently commutes about 30 minutes to her job in Goodyear.
“I don’t see that as something that someone just getting out of school should have to do,” Stein said.
After a gas station, she would like Tartesso to get a coffee shop.
“Something where the students that get out of school can go hang out, so they don’t have to go straight home or hang out in the heat,” Stein said.
Stein said she currently spends a lot of her free time in Tempe to go to new shops and favorite places.
Residents hope for less industrial development
Chris Barr, principal of Buckeye Tartesso LLC, said he hears the complaints. A controversial new rezoning of land to industrial from residential is part of a potential solution, he said. The change axed some 6,000 planned homes.
While some residents are skeptical and hope the plan shifts away from industrial zoning, adding jobs is necessary for creating both rooftops and the commercial and retail development Tartesso residents are asking for, Barr said.
Accelerating economic growth will in turn accelerate the growth of community amenities, including grocery stores and gas stations, he said.
Tartesso, along the southwestern part of the Sun Valley Parkway, is projected to have about 100,000 residents at build-out.
Hundreds of thousands of residents eventually will live along Sun Valley Parkway, Barr said. It once was known as the “Road to Nowhere,” with not much around it. But communities are slowly growing, including Festival Ranch along the northern part of the parkway.
A vast majority of Buckeye’s residents commute east for work. Barr hopes to change that by adding more employment opportunities along the parkway.
Obtaining the necessary certificates for industrial development is easier than getting approval for residential from a water standpoint. But Barr said that’s not the reason the land was rezoned.
“We just wanted to create some employment opportunities and really good-paying jobs for people in that region that don’t want to hop on the freeway and potentially have to leave the city of Buckeye to drive to and from their job every day,” Barr said.
Tartesso LLC bought the development in 2016. When Barr came in, the community was still recovering from the Great Recession, which had greatly slowed down growth, Barr said. Right now, Barr said the focus is on housing, which will later bring in retail amenities.
While some land is zoned for commercial use and was purchased years ago, Barr said many projects were halted by the recession.
“They had a lot of rooftop projections that took a long time to materialize because the market got effectively shut down for a couple of years,” Barr said.
Ultimately, it is up to the purchasers of the land to decide what to do with it and when. Additional amenities like a recreation center also would come with additional HOA fees, and not everyone would be happy to pay those.
“The demand is, we need affordable housing in the Valley. And we’ve got a big problem staring us down if we don’t come to some solutions that allow for building on Sun Valley Parkway, which is going to be a great place for affordable housing,” Barr said.
In a statement to The Arizona Republic, a Buckeye spokesperson said the city’s development teams were actively collaborating with brokers, developers and service providers to attract growth in Buckeye, including in Tartesso and Festival Ranch.
“While commercial development is currently thriving in the eastern parts of Buckeye, our growth trajectory is set to extend westward along Sun Valley Parkway. This will foster expansion and development in those areas,” the city statement said. “This growth trajectory is already attracting new investment, including a recent commitment from QT (QuikTrip) to develop a new location south of Tartesso.”
What’s still to come at Tartesso?
The QuikTrip announcement means Tartesso residents’ wishes for a gas station soon will come true, although a timeline for the opening was not set.
The gas station will be located about a mile from the community’s main entrance. The nearest gas station is currently a Love’s Travel Shop located nearly 10 miles away from Tartesso on Miller Road.
As for what’s next aside from industrial development, Barr said Tartesso currently has applications for certificates of assured water supply pending with the Department of Water Resources for about 5,700 homes.
Those certificates are necessary for the next phase of construction to begin.
Barr said Tartesso has begun discussions with major builders for those homes. Once the development figures out its water certificates, Barr said the launch would be relatively quick.
And those homes, combined with new jobs to the area, should make way for the amenities that Tartesso residents have been asking for, such as grocery stores, more gas stations, movie theaters and hospitals, most of which look to have a certain number of rooftops within a certain radius.
“I don’t think we’re quite there,” Barr said. “But I believe activity breeds more activity.”
Reach the reporter at [email protected] or by phone at 480-259-8545. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @AlexandraHardle.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: These Arizona residents carry on without nearby gas station, grocery
Source Agencies
