Scottsdale builds up Desert Center

Design work on the McDowell Sonoran Preserve’s Desert Discovery Center is expected to begin in the next several weeks after the Scottsdale City Council on Tuesday agreed to foot half of the bill.

View preserve map

The council voted unanimously to allocate $37,500 toward hiring a consultant to begin a marketing and feasibility study that ultimately will result in detailed design and construction plans and an updated cost estimate for the interpretive nature center.

It will be located on land east of Thompson Peak Parkway between Bell Road and Union Hills Drive that the city is condemning for a gateway to the planned 36,000-acre preserve.

“If we’re fortunate, it would break ground hopefully in 2009,” said Tom Silverman, member of a city task force formed to get the Desert Discovery Center off the ground. “It’s going to be a phenomenal venue for Scottsdale. It’s something different. It’s unique.”

Private donors have contributed an amount to the city’s allocation to fund the $75,000 study, which represents the first of two phases, said Melinda Gulick, another task force member. The first phase will identify the existing and potential users of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve and take input from those users and educators on what the nature center needs to include in terms of exhibits, size and programming.

“We’re hoping to have a refined concept at the end of this phase,” Gulick said. “This is a really exciting first step. It’s definitely a several-year undertaking.”

Bob Cafarella, preserve director, said officials expect to hire a consultant by early September. “The hope here is to go out one last time and to more scientifically determine what residents of Scottsdale and people who visit would like to see,” he said.

The second phase, expected to cost $50,000, would entail detailed design work on the facility and the development of more accurate cost estimates. The City Council will be asked to fund half that expense, as well, Cafarella said.

Previous estimates dating to the late 1990s put the cost to build the Desert Discovery Center at $15.5 million, but with the new study, that figure could go up or down, he said. The city expects to pick up half of that capital cost, too.

Gulick said, “It’s time to refine that concept. Obviously we want an economically feasible and reasonable project, but also one that’s worthy of a place in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.”

However, the price tag does not include whatever value a court assigns to 383 acres the city seeks to take from the Toll Brothers development company by eminent domain. The Desert Discovery Center is slated to sit on that land. The city’s appraisal pegs the value of the acreage at nearly $34 million. Toll Brothers’ appraisal, on the other hand, put it at nearly $119 million.