PHOENIX JANUARY 18, 2002) - Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic

Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic
Walking through land that the Pivotal Group donated to Peoria are Jahm Najafi of the Pivotal Group; Ken Forgia, Peoria councilman; John Keegan, Peoria mayor; and Francis Najafi of the Pivotal Group.

When the Phoenix-based Pivotal Group builds its 1,300-acre residential development in Peoria, it won't bother including a golf course.

Nestled between a pair of rolling hills studded with desert vegetation, the development already has natural appeal, the company figures.

"Why do we need an artificial amenity like a golf course or a lake when we have all this God-given beauty?" asked Francis Najafi, Pivotal's chief executive officer.

Peoria officials hope to persuade many other developers to take that attitude and help provide sweeping tracts of open space.
Pivotal followed through by donating to the city more than 300 acres of mountain land between Dynamite Boulevard and Happy Valley Road. The company will hand over more land for a park and trails winding through the project. The donation is the largest single land handout by a private developer in the Valley.

Najafi said that recent surveys indicate open space is a major factor when people are deciding on a place to live and that it behooves developers to protect the landscape.

West Valley cities, unable to pay for desert land for preservation, are determined to work with developers like Pivotal to protect open spaces.

In Surprise, officials are updating the city zoning laws to see how they can better protect hillsides, washes and other environmentally sensitive lands.

"A lot of what we anticipate looking at are density bonuses, density transfers, transferring development rights for larger open space areas," said Scott Phillips, Surprise's planning manager. "Our City Council is very concerned about making sure that we protect the open spaces, and they made that pretty clear to us."

In Peoria, the city created a Desert Lands Conservation Master Plan to outline preservation strategies, and it is now working on an Environmentally Sensitive Lands Ordinance modeled after the successful program in Scottsdale.

"We do have a hillside ordinance, but we don't have a true Environmentally Sensitive Lands Ordinance because we don't address washes and flatlands that may be significant and have significant vegetation on it," said Debra Stark, Peoria's community development director.

Scottsdale's lands ordinance law covers everything from hillside building densities to the allowable colors of exterior walls and rooftops in desert and mountain areas. It also has requirements for developers to maintain native vegetation and move plants and cactuses that are displaced by homes.

Stark said Peoria might have an easier time protecting desert lands because most property owners have large tracts of land. In Scottsdale, he said, there are more property owners who each own smaller parcels of 10 to 30 acres, making it harder to protect meaningful amounts of land.

Phillips said some environmentalists deride density transfers, saying cities should just restrict developers to one home per acre. But, he said, allowing transfers would open up larger swaths of desert for protection.

"Just having one-acre lots everywhere is so detrimental to the environment and doesn't serve any purpose at all," he said.

For more information about Pivotal Private Equity, visit www.pivotalgroup.com