Scottsdale’s former CrackerJax property getting a $1B makeover. What we know.

By Sam Kmack from AZCentral.com

Scottsdale officials voted 5-2 to approve a massive development that will include apartments, restaurants, retail space and office buildings on a derelict property of the abandoned CrackerJax amusement park.

The billion-dollar project is called The Parque. It will be owned by George Kurtz, who made his $3 billion fortune as the cofounder and CEO of a cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike.

The Parque will sit on 32 acres that’s right on the southern border of the Scottsdale Promenade, which Kurtz also owns. It will be made up of 12 buildings that range from one to 10 stories tall, or roughly 119 feet at the high end. The project plan shows that it will include:

• A 223-room five-star hotel on roughly 189,000 square feet of the property.
• More than 1,200 housing units, which will include both apartments and condos. About 124 of those units, or 10%, will be offered at affordable rates for the next decade.
• Five restaurants dotted throughout the property, including one inside of the hotel, as well as more than 25,000 square feet of retail space.
• A “green parking garage” that will have vegetation, open space on the roof, electric vehicle charging and more than 1,100 parking spaces.
• A two-acre central park that would be public open space. The project site itself will consist of about 50% open space, according to the developer.
• About 150,000 square feet of office space geared towards the tech industry.

The Parque’s original development proposal was even larger than the plan approved on Nov. 13, which drew heavy criticism from Scottsdale residents who had concerns over everything from its water use, to traffic impact, to its effect on Scottsdale’s suburban “character.”

The changes to the proposal, including a 24% density decrease, were more than enough to calm those fears for Scottsdale’s development-wary City Council. In a rare move, officials emphatically praised the massive proposal before making it just the sixth large project to receive city approval over the past three years.

“We listened to the community. We reduced height, we reduced density and when you do that you reduce the traffic impacts,” said John Berry, The Parque’s lawyer. “We will plant over 1,000 trees as I’ve said and that will have the concomitant effect of reducing the urban heat island impacts.”

Those tweaks, additional assurances and the project’s projected economic impact were what drove Scottsdale officials to greenlight the plan.

In addition to the developer planting a small forest’s worth of trees, The Parque agreed to recycle its building materials, and both pay for and bring in its own water. Berry said the complex will also include Scottsdale’s “first net zero office building,” meaning it will reclaim more carbon than it emits.

“We listened to the community. We reduced height, we reduced density and when you do that you reduce the traffic impacts,” said John Berry, The Parque’s lawyer. “We will plant over 1,000 trees as I’ve said and that will have the concomitant effect of reducing the urban heat island impacts.”

Those tweaks, additional assurances and the project’s projected economic impact were what drove Scottsdale officials to greenlight the plan.

In addition to the developer planting a small forest’s worth of trees, The Parque agreed to recycle its building materials, and both pay for and bring in its own water. Berry said the complex will also include Scottsdale’s “first net zero office building,” meaning it will reclaim more carbon than it emits.

Those types of forecasts aren’t always accurate, however. Economists have to make a series of assumptions about the future to arrive at those figures, so it’s far from a perfect science. The Republic wrote a detailed breakdown of how the studies work earlier this year.

Regardless, the project will produce more revenue than the city is currently taking in from the unused property.

Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega also called it a “talent magnet” that will help Kurtz’s CrowdStrike create “a flagship presence in the Southwest” by attracting top tech talent. And it’s happening just as another tech company is leaving Scottsdale.

“Motorola, which was here and part of our beautiful city, is moving on. And we have CrowdStrike ascending at the same time,” Ortega explained.

He then addressed residents who had concerns about the project ruining Scottsdale’s suburban character by saying “the West’s most Western town can coexist with the best in class (developments).”

Council members acknowledged that The Parque will increase traffic to some extent, which is already particularly bad around the nearby Scottsdale Airport. But the approved proposal included some new traffic signals to mitigate that impact.

And only one intersection will see a marked increase in congestion during peak hours, meaning “the traffic is going to stay relatively the same to what it is today,” according to Councilmember Tom Durham.

The only officials to vote ‘no’ on The Parque project were Councilmembers Kathy Littlefield and Barry Graham. The latter said only that he struggled with “the overall size of the project and how it may impact that area of the city.”

Littlefield had a longer list of more specific complaints that included her preference for “buy to own” homes rather than rental units.

She also disagreed with the Airport Advisory Commission’s unanimous support of The Parque, saying that by placing apartments so close to the airport the city was “increasing accident possibilities” that could cost lives and put the airport’s future in jeopardy.

“It only takes one accident. Two years ago we had such an accident in Scottsdale and four people were killed in a crash,” Littlefield said. “It was going in the other direction, but what if it was going towards CrackerJax?”

Each of the other five officials who voted in favor of the project echoed Ortega’s sentiment about the project checking all Scottsdale’s boxes, even though it’s larger than what the city typically approves.

“We fight pretty relentlessly to protect our neighborhoods,” Whitehead said. “We can’t stop development. What we want is great development.”