Call to Action: City and Mall want to open our neighborhood to Mall traffic!

IMPORTANT: URGENT Precinct 134 Development needs your involvement! See the bottom of this post for a call to send an email and attend a neighborhood meeting on Tuesday night.

From this article appearing in AZ Central this weekend:

Hearthstone fights to keep wall solid
City wants to add mall access route despite 23 repairs

For the third time in five years, residents of the Hearthstone neighborhood immediately west of Chandler Fashion Center will fight to keep a continuous wall between themselves and the mall.

The city is discussing building a pedestrian walkway through the 8-foot-tall wall separating the mall and Price Park. Since 2002, vandals have repeatedly smashed holes in the masonry wall as hand and foot holds to make climbing over easier, said Dave McDowell, assistant community services director.

The Chandler Parks and Recreation Board will hear McDowell's motion on Tuesday. If approved, the measure would call for a temporary opening along Chandler Village Parkway, which runs to the south of Price Park.

This is a serious matter for our neighborhood. The last thing we want is for there to be access through this wall and increase foot traffic in and out of our neighborhood to and from the Mall. This was actually the agreement with the developers when the Mall was built. As the article notes:

The wall was erected in 2002 after negotiations with Westcor, the developer of Chandler Fashion Center. More than 600 residents petitioned the city and the company to build a continuous wall, prohibiting any foot traffic between the mall and the neighborhood.

I appreciate that there may be a handful of vandals that like to climb over the wall and they're damaging the thing in the process, but that's no reason to build a doorway in the thing and encourage even more foot traffic!

I've written this email to the Chandler Parks and Recreation Board fighting against this:

Attn: Parks and Recreation Board

Dear Board Members,

I am writing to express my extreme disapproval of the recent motion introduced by Dave McDowell, assistant community services director, to add a pedestrian access through the wall now separating the Chandler Mall and Price Park.

As a resident of the Hearthstone subdivision, we negotiated in good faith with the city and with Westcor, the mall developers, to have a continuous wall separating the park and the Mall. This was done for many key reasons, chief among them was to minimize the disruption to our neighborhood that would come with the introduction of a major new shopping mall in our back yards.

The city and the developers agreed to this, as well as the diversion of the road between the Mall and our subdivision, too. The result has allowed us both to coexist in harmony, with minimal negative impact from auto and foot traffic through our neighborhood.

Now, I am extremely displeased to learn of suggestions to open the wall to facilitate foot traffic to and from the mall from our neighborhood. I know there have been a few vandals who have not appreciated having the wall there and have caused damage to it. But this is most certainly not a valid argument for relenting to their vandalism and opening the wall!

We agreed in good faith with the city and the developers, and now that they have established themselves, they're trying to change the agreement. That's not honorable, and it threatens the safety and calm of our neighborhood by inviting pedestrian traffic into our neighborhood.

If the city is concerned with the vandalism that has occurred to the wall from a few vandals, I shudder to imagine the increase in disruption and crime that will be occurring in our neighborhood if there is ever a door put in the wall and many, many more people begin traveling through our subdivision to and from the Mall.

The members of the Parks and Recreation Board have a responsibility to not simply consider the cost of repairing one section of wall, but also the significant negative impact on the Hearthstone neighborhood if the wall is opened up.

We are relying on you to do your duty to safeguard our community interests, and I strongly urge you to reject this motion.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

George Gregg
Resident, Hearthstone Subdivision

I strongly urge all members of Precinct 134, particularly those on the West side of the Mall, to also send an email. You can send an email via this page, selecting the "Parks and Recreation" topic.

The Parks & Recreation Board is meeting to discuss this Tuesday, June 06, 2006 at 6:30 P.M. at the Windmill Suites of Chandler, just on Chandler Blvd., nort of our neighborhood. IF YOU CAN GO, PLEASE DO SO AND FIGHT TO KEEP THE WALL WHOLE.

We need to keep fighting this fight, because if we don't we will soon have all kinds of traffic through our neighborhood, and the disruption, vandalism and other crime that comes from it. Thank you for joining in this effort!