East Valley officials: housing an economic development issue
The East Valley’s economic development has been soaring, with billions of dollars in new industry arriving in recent years. But there is one issue that may slow down that growth.
“Housing is an economic development issue,” said Dan Henderson, the director of economic development for Gilbert. “It’s something we take very seriously.”
New companies keep arriving for a variety of reasons, including the weather, an educated workforce and low taxes. However, if their employees are unable to obtain affordable housing, it could cause those companies to look elsewhere.
“Yeah, it is an economic development issue in Chandler,” said Micah Miranda, the economic development director for Chandler.
Miranda, Henderson and Doreen Cott, economic development director for Queen Creek, spoke at the 2025 Tri-City Economic Development Update put on by the Chambers of Commerce in those three cities.
Miranda said that Chandler has been thinking about this problem for a while, because they are the nearest to buildout of the three cities.
The city has developed about 94% of its available land. Most of what remains is set aside for business or industrial use. There’s not a lot of space left for housing.
“The City of Chandler has been in this space for a while, and just this past year … Council made a number of pretty substantial code changes related to zoning, specifically to allow more density in certain areas of the city,” Miranda said.
“Economic development is very protective of land within the employment corridors. Maybe, in the Price Corridor, it makes sense to do ground floor retail, second and third floor office and then multifamily above it, so you’re getting more of that mixed-use employment as well as residential living.
“We’re looking at alternatives as part of this General Plan.”
Chandler staffers are working on an update to the city’s General Plan, which officials plan to present to voters next year.
Even Queen Creek, one of Arizona’s newest and fastest growing communities, is addressing the lack of housing.
“When I first started with the town, over 18 years ago, multi-family was only allowed in the town center,” Cott said.
“Now, we have multi-family projects that are built, or under construction, or planned throughout the community, recognizing that there’s a need for more than single family detached homes.”
Henderson said Gilbert had never undertaken a full housing study before. However, when it became a priority in the last state legislative session, town officials decided they needed to get to work on one.
“We’re very fortunate, and a little bit lucky, that we started that initiative just prior to some of the mandates that pulled us into this,” Henderson said. “We reached out to our utility partners and they very graciously stepped into this role to assist in putting this together.”
Gilbert and Queen Creek still have land to build more major housing developments. Chandler, however, has only small projects here and there that are more suited for multi-family apartments or condos than they are large single-family homes.
That has Miranda looking up.
“It’s going to be a function of redevelopment, and take that redevelopment vertical,” he said. “Either God creates more Earth to develop, or we start going vertical in the region, which is probably going to happen.”
The three directors were asked if there was anything that could be done to make housing more affordable. That sat silent for about 10 seconds.
“I think we’re still going to be in an extremely competitive housing market,” Miranda said. “It’s simple supply, demand and economics. So, verticality, probably across the region, is ultimately what’s going to help raise prices into affordability.”
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