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Rising construction costs blew Tortosa Trails budget

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Rising construction costs blew Tortosa Trails budget
Tortosa Trails is planned for the northeast corner of the Tortosa subdivision.

The Maricopa Planning and Zoning Commission approved a one-year extension of the preliminary plat of Tortosa Trails, a planned area development on the northeast section of Tortosa.

Tortosa Trails is a 287-acre platted subdivision which will add 1,052 single-family homes to Maricopa’s eastern edge, near the Volkswagen Test Track. It neighbors the Gila River Reservation to the north.

The Commission approved the measure 6-1 as the developer, Communities Southwest of Scottsdale, asked for extra time to complete its plats. Their two-year plat planning phase was about to expire.

“We expect to submit our 1A and 1B plans in the next couple weeks,” said Stefanie Crerie, project manager. “We will then move forward with the project.”

She said it took longer than expected to gather comments on the plan. Construction costs rose about 40 percent as they were going through planning stages.

“With that in mind, it basically blew our budget,” Crerie said. “We had to redo our plans in different areas to cut costs.”

She said other developers and builders are experiencing the same thing, higher costs and a shortage of labor.

“It is what it is, so we are going to move forward. The other part of it is the market,” Crerie said, adding the properties were marketed last year, “and we really didn’t see much interest in it.”

She said that market wasn’t there last year, but the developers are hopeful it is there this year.

In all, 60 of the development’s 287 acres will be reserved as open space with an average of 3.62 dwellings planned per acre.

Four lot sizes are proposed, 60×120, 50×120, 45×120 and 55×120 feet.