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Pinal
County’s District 3 covers slightly more
than 1,000 square miles and is home to some
100,000 residents (estimates based on 2007
CAAG/DES POPTAC figures). The District
includes the cities of Casa Grande and
Maricopa, part of western Coolidge, the Ak-Chin
Indian Community, and all of the Gila River
Indian Community and the Tohono O’odham
Nation that are located within Pinal County,
and the community of Stanfield. Bounded
roughly by Eleven Mile Corner Road & Skousen
Road on the east and the Pinal/Maricopa
County line on the west, the district skirts
Eloy, Toltec, Arizona City, and CG Mountain
on the south.
The Table
Top Wilderness Area and the Kortsen
West Pinal Park are two premiere
recreational offerings – located in the far
western part of the County, immediately next
to the Pinal/Maricopa County line. The
Pinal County Fairgrounds – home to more
than 50 years of family fun and
entertainments (and the Central Arizona
Raceway) – is tucked away in the
southeastern corner of the District. A
significant part of the CANAMEX Corridor
lies within District 3 following Interstate
10 to the Interstate 8 interchange and then
flowing west (past the County line) to Gila
Bend where it bends northward toward Buckeye
and then ultimately exits Arizona in the
Kingman area.
The Signal
Peak Campus of Central Arizona College
(more formally known as the Pinal County
Community College District) is located on
the eastern face of the Sacaton Mountain
range’s Signal Peak. This campus is the
original (and home) campus for the College.
It also plays host to CARLOTA (the
Central Arizona Regional Law Officers
Training Academy) and is finishing
construction of a regional fire training
center.
In addition to
serving as one of the major retail shopping
hubs for western and central Pinal County,
District 3 has two of the most active
irrigation and drainage districts supporting
much of Arizona’s irrigated agriculture.
There are some 300,000 head of cattle
located in feed yards and dairies in the
District. For the record, the
agricultural segment of the County accounts
for some 25% of our economy. The
Pinal Energy Ethanol Plant – the only
ethanol production plant in Arizona, serving
Arizona and California – is located in the
City of Maricopa. In addition to the
Pinal Energy plant, District 3 has some
1,100 megawatts of electrical generation
capacity evenly split between Arizona
Public Service’s Sundance Generation Station
and Salt River Project’s Desert Basin
Generation Station. In fact, almost all
of Pinal County’s manufacturing capacity is
located in District 3.
Looking
outward and into the future, District 3 will
continue to play an incredibly important
role in the ultimate development of Pinal
County and the State of Arizona. At this
point in time, we are the demographic center
of the state. Visionaries across the
country are pointing to Arizona and talking
about the development of the Sun Corridor
which is supposed to stretch from Flagstaff
to Sierra Vista and/or Douglas … and have a
combined population of approximately 6-8
million people. District 3 is square in the
sights of that corridor: this provides us
with yet one more incentive to plan now so
that we can build our sense of unique place,
balanced and sustainable development, and
have the necessary infrastructure either
planned, designed, and/or ready to go as the
Corridor begins to deploy itself.
Part of our
future is also wrapped up in population
projections that place our County as the
second most populous county in Arizona –
surpassing Pima County around the 2030
mark. Again, these are “guesstimates” and
they ignore some of the real challenges that
we must address in the coming years.
Challenges of sustainability, jobs,
availability of natural resources, and
residents’ choices about land uses and
development are all elements in this very
large and complex future that may – or may
not – be our children’s inheritance.
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