The first annexation request the Town of San Tan Valley has ever received is about 3.3 acres of vacant dirt at the southwest corner of Gantzel Road and Lone Star Lane, and the owners want to build a retail center on it.

The request is not new, and neither is the opposition. Neighbors turned out against it at the Town Council's required public hearing on July 15, raising the private road that serves four homes beside the site, the deed restrictions on the land, and traffic and safety on Gantzel Road. No body has voted on the annexation at any stage, and the request has kept moving. The Aug. 24 meeting was the Planning and Zoning Commission's turn.

Town staff walked the Planning and Zoning Commission through the request, filed as ANX2026-01, at the Aug. 24 meeting. The item was presented for information only. No vote was taken and none was scheduled.

The parcel sits under Pinal County jurisdiction today, carrying the county's Suburban Ranch designation. The owners are separately seeking C-2 General Commercial zoning from the town. The property owners asked the town to start the process; Community Development Director Gilbert Olgin confirmed this was not a town-initiated annexation, and said the town is not pursuing annexations on its own at this point.

Where the Request Stands

An annexation in Arizona follows a fixed sequence, and this one is partway through it.

• The Town Council has already held the public hearing state law requires, on July 15, where neighbors spoke against the request.
• A blank annexation petition was recorded with the Pinal County Recorder on June 22, which starts the statutory waiting period.
• The applicant is now gathering signatures on the petition. State law requires the owners of at least half the property value in the area.
• If the signature requirements are met, the annexation goes back to the Town Council for a decision. Olgin said that could come in September or October, and that the date is not finalized.

If the land is annexed, the town assigns it a comparable zoning as state law requires. The commercial rezoning is a separate application, and it is expected in front of the commission next month for a recommendation. Staff said that recommendation can move forward contingent on the annexation. If the annexation fails, the rezoning does not take effect.

The Queen Creek Complication

The parcel is inside the Town of Queen Creek's planning area, and it has been caught up in a larger boundary question.

Staff told the commission Queen Creek advertised pulling several areas out of its planning area. One, containing subdivisions, went through. This parcel was put on hold, and staff said Queen Creek did not tell the town why until they asked.

The reason is fire protection. Staff said a third attempt is underway to expand the Queen Creek fire district into the area, and this property was inside the petition boundary. Queen Creek held off on reducing its planning area to see whether that effort had legs.

Queen Creek is not opposed to the annexation, staff said, after two meetings between the towns, the most recent the week before. There is one catch: if San Tan Valley annexes the parcel, it cannot be in the Queen Creek fire district. It would be covered by Rural Metro, like the rest of San Tan Valley.

A Commissioner's Warning

Commissioner Donna Hallman, who said she has lived and shopped in the area for more than 30 years and brings real estate and construction experience, used her time to caution the town.

She said the parcel is not, in her opinion, conducive to commercial, citing getting in and out of the site, community safety and the fact that the road cannot be widened. Neighbors made the same access argument in July, when the property owner to the west told the council Lone Star Lane is a private road serving four homes. She said she worries the town will be so pleased about picking up commercial property and tax base that it stops looking at the whole picture, noting the parcel is only about three acres at a time when the town is working on state land.

Hallman also said the property remaining in Queen Creek's planning area concerns her. "I don't want to ever feel like sitting on this commission that we're doing a tit for tat," she said.

What the Owners Have in Mind

A representative for the property owners told the commission they would pursue commercial zoning for the site whether or not it is annexed. One owner is a retail broker and another is a medical professional, he said, and the group is confident the site can work.

No tenants have been identified. The representative described the likely outcome as a mix of retail and restaurant space, possibly with a medical or dental office. He argued that a parcel on Gantzel Road, a major arterial and the primary commercial corridor in the area, sitting across from a water treatment facility, is not suited to rural or large-lot single family homes.

On access, he said a completed traffic impact study calls for a deceleration lane along the Gantzel Road frontage, entered south of Lone Star Lane, so the site would not depend on Lone Star Lane alone. Staff added that the lane would require an additional 70 feet of dedication off the front of the parcel to fit the improvements.

Water and wastewater in the area come from third-party utility providers. The staff report notes that any revenue to the town would depend on what eventually gets built, and that no project-specific fiscal analysis was prepared.

What the Drawings Show

A preliminary site plan for the parcel, prepared in July and stamped not for construction, gives a picture of what the owners have in mind. It is an early document that comes before both the annexation and the rezoning, and none of it is approved.

The plan is labeled Gantzel Commercial Center. It shows two buildings of 8,233 square feet each, 16,466 square feet in all, covering about 11% of the site. Each building is drawn with a 1,500-square-foot restaurant space at one end and the rest divided into retail and service bays. Both are 25 feet tall, under the 30 feet allowed.

• Fifty-seven parking spaces, four of them accessible, against 56 required.
• A six-foot masonry wall and a 25-foot landscape buffer where the site meets residentially zoned land, which is three of its four sides.
• New entry drives, a new right-turn lane on Gantzel Road, and new sidewalk, curb and gutter along the frontage.
• A monument sign near Lone Star Lane, and space reserved along the west edge for a future connection to the neighboring property.

The plan lists the owners as TB Lone Star LLC, DB Lone Star LLC, PK Lone Star LLC and DK Lone Star LLC, with a Gilbert address, and the applicant as Greg Bandelin of Sixty First Place Architects in Scottsdale. The site is in flood zone X.

The next step belongs to the applicant: gather the signatures, then back to the Town Council.