Members of the Nogales, Arizona Planning and Zoning Commission voted 3-1 this week to deny Nogales Properties the chance to build a self storage facility on the border. The facility, which would have been classified as a mini-storage, would have had 44 units and would have been placed on a strip of land that used to be home to several cross-border tunnels. Developers have been planning and preparing for the project for two years.
“The intent is to cater to pedestrians who are going back and forth (across the border),” Project Engineer Gerardo Calza told commissioners before they voted. (Holley, Denise. “’No’ on mini-storage near border.” Nogales International. March 26, 2010.) Nogales is an international city, with the border between the United States and Mexico running right through it. Pedestrians often walk from one country to the other through the Nogales border checkpoint. Nogales Properties had planned for travelers, especially pedestrian travelers crossing the border for short day trips, to be able to leave some of their possessions in self storage units in order to lighten their loads.
But Nogales planning commissioners did not see it that way, even though the site was already zoned for general commercial use. It is a little out of the ordinary for a self storage facility to have to be reviewed and approved by a planning commission when the land it will be located on is already zoned for commercial use. But, as Nogales developers are discover
ing, when a facility is planned to sit right on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, it cannot be assumed that the project approval process will proceed in the ordinary way without running into opposition.
“How do we know there are not hazardous materials there?” Commissioner Dina Sanchez wondered. “Will you have an on-site manager?” asked another commissioner, Curtis Kraushaar. “Were the neighbors notified?” an unnamed commissioner wanted to know.
Calza explained that the gates to the mini-storage would be closed at night, that a manager would be on duty, but off site, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and that the law did not require developers to notify neighbors of their plans.
The neighbors themselves were of mixed minds about the project. David Lundstrom, the president of the Crawford Street Historic District Association, had high hopes for the project. Knowing the site was the first thing that pedestrians see when they approach the border, he hoped to work with the developers to make sure that the storage facility looked nice and fit in with the historic buildings in the area. “It is one of the first things people see when they drive into Nogales,” he told Nogales International.
But some neighbors were still worried about the site’s past history as a border smuggling mecca. They feared that smugglers would try to misuse the facility.
“What do you think will happen if there’s 24-hour access to a mini-storage on a site where tunnels were previously discovered?” asked Dave Brabec, a homeowner who lives in the neighborhood. It has been many years since there were tunnels at the proposed mini-storage location. Neighbors trying to recall the timeframe estimated that the tunnels must have been found in the late 1970s or early 1980s. At that time, a church stood on the land.
Sources used:
Holley, Denise. “’No’ on mini-storage near border.” Nogales International. March 26, 2010.
Jordan, Bruce. “The process of project approval.” Inside Self-Storage. 9/1/1997.