Historic Scottsdale horse ranch corralled

The last vestiges of Brusally Ranch, a key property in Scottsdale Arabian horse history, received approval Thursday to be subdivided for houses.

Scottsdale’s Development Review Board voted 4-0 to approve developer Starpointe Communities application to subdivide the 5.7-acre site on 84th Street north of Cholla Street to accommodate four houses in addition to the original 6,000-square-foot Spanish colonial-style ranch home now known as the Arizona Transplant House, used by recuperating organ transplant patients.

Starpointe’s lawyer, John Berry, said deed restrictions prevent the original home’s demolition for 15 years.

City Councilman Bob Littlefield said that’s better than nothing.

“I hate to lose anything historic, but I think that’s probably a better outcome than we could have expected,” Littlefield said.

Many Arabian horses can trace their lineage to those bred at the original 160-acre Brusally Ranch by Ed Tweed, founder and first president of the state’s Arabian Horse Association.

Tweed’s importation of about two dozen Arabians from Poland in the 1960s put Scottsdale on the equestrian world’s map, according to historian Tobi Taylor, owner of Coronado Ranch in Tucson, which breeds Brusally Arabians.

The association stages the Arabian Horse Show at WestWorld of Scottsdale each year. City officials have said the event contributes more than $50 million to the local economy.

Tweed’s daughter donated the family home to the Mayo Clinic in the mid-1990s. Since 1999, recipients of organ transplants at the Scottsdale clinic have recuperated there.

The transplant house will be sold, along with the 1.7 acres on which it sits, as a single-family home. The Mayo Clinic is now leasing the property from Starpointe.

The house’s current facility cares for patients recuperating from kidney, liver, heart, pancreas or bone-marrow transplants.

The nonprofit, in return, asks $25 a night for room and board, if the patient can afford it.

The house only has seven rooms and is no longer large enough to accommodate the number of patients seeking to stay there.

So the decision was made to build a transplant house on the campus of the Mayo Hospital, 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard, Phoenix.

The existing facility is about seven miles from the hospital.

The first phase, to open in fall 2008, is expected to have 12 rooms and cost about $4 million.

The remaining phases likely will be done over the subsequent five to seven years, and ultimately will have about 30 rooms.