Madera Developer Fights back

[Excerpts from an article by Tim Hull from the Green Valley News and Sun, Sunday, March 25, 2007.]

Developer Mike Kettenbach is considering pursuing other options than the cluster development for his land on the grassland bajada at the mouth of Madera Canyon. He was upset by the Design Review Committee's position to not continue the review of his proposal because of the need for a permit for a waste water treatment plant that the county said would be very difficult to obtain.

Kettenbach has hired a Tucson attorney, G. Lawrence Schubart, who wrote to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry stating that Kettenbach has pursued the cluster development in good faith in that it would leave less of a footprint on the fragile and rare grassland ecosystem.

In order to avoid the need for a community waste water treatment plant on the property, each house would have to be situated on at least 4+ acres and each would have a septic tank and leach field. This option would put more of the land in private hands than would the cluster development.

Another option is for the developer to divide all the land into 36-acre or larger parcels for private sale. This would avoid Kettenbach from having to deal with further development but could saturate the land with an unknown spread of housing units.

Luis Calvo, speaking for the Friends of Madera Canyon, would prefer not to have any development on the land, but definitely would not want the cluster development. Instead, he would rather see the land zoned RH that allows one unit per a little over four acres. That option preserves the rural character of the landscape without the high density cluster of homes on a small parcel.

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