Phoenix-Mesa Gateway planners should heed lessons of other Valley cities where residential communities were built near airports

Williams Gateway Airport has long been the focus of the south East Valley’s hope for an economic future, the subject of countless meetings, studies, grant proposals and second-guessing.

Now that it’s been renamed Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and has a fledgling passenger airline service component, it’s not just theoretical anymore. But the level of discussion is taking a big step back up to the theoretical level with the Mesa Gateway Strategic Development Plan, the subject of a two-day public workshop last week.

The consultant-led discussion of how a 30-square-mile area, which includes the airport and Arizona State University Polytechnic, should be developed up to the year 2030 is organized around three possible patterns.

• A “new urbanist” theme which would put the most homes and jobs near the airport, under the theory homebuyers of the future will value convenience to work and shopping over large lots.

• A more conventionally surburban pattern, with jobs at the hub and homes in outlying areas.

• Continuing Mesa’s current strategy of keeping residential uses as far away from the airport as possible, buffering the airport’s noise and traffic with a concentration of industrial and other employment uses.

The intent of this process is to come up with a single development pattern plan to be submitted for the Mesa City Council’s approval next May, likely containing elements of all three “styles,” said HDR/S.R. Beard and Associates vice president Mark McLaren Thursday. The workshop marked the end of public involvement in the strategic plan, and its goal is to strike the right balance between developing the airport to its fullest potential and creating a vital job center for the city.

The history of the coexistence of Valley homes and airports is not a happy one. A whiff of the possibility of limited passenger service at Scottsdale Airport was shot down by the outcry from residents living just beyond that city’s vaunted airpark.

Chandler floated the idea of a runway extension at its municipal airport past voters, who looked past the potential economic benefits of such a project and answered with a flat “no, no, no.”

Still, there are some people out there who contend residential uses near an airport is not such a horrible idea. It was pointed out at the workshop that some of the condominiums under construction on the shore of Tempe Town Lake are closer to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport than the Federal Aviation Administration recommends, based on noise concerns. But we don’t know just how well the reality of that will work out, and Sky Harbor is too big to be shut down or significantly stunted by a few noise complaints.

Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport is just now getting off the ground, and might not be able to withstand the turbulence created by a large residential outcry. We hope architects of this strategic plan, and the city officials being pressed to adopt it, will proceed carefully when it comes to mixing homes and airports.