Inside the fight to save this Tempe golf club from a housing developer

At various points in the last 45 years, developers have tried to raze the Shalimar Golf Club, fittingly located off Golf Avenue and Loop 101 in Tempe.

In 1979, developers purchased the land with the intent to build high-density homes in place of the nine-hole course. The Shalimar Association, formed by residents of the surrounding Shalimar Estates neighborhood, pooled money and won a legal battle to save the course. In 2005, the same group — which now also goes by “Save Shalimar” — successfully opposed an attempted sale to another developer hoping to replace the fairways and greens with houses.

Now the 44-acre private course, built in 1961, is being sold again. Jane and Dick Neuheisel, who have owned the course since 1984, are selling the property to BB Living and Cachet Homes for a reported $22 million. The two companies seek to construct 277 housing units on the property, some for rent and some to be sold. And once again, longtime residents who treasure the course are fighting back.

The sale will happen, residents acknowledge. Ownership of the land will change hands, but community members such as Save Shalimar figurehead Carl Streiff say they need to be included in discussions about what to do next.

“I’m not interested in any adversarial or antagonistic engagement, or otherwise negative problem solving,” Streiff said. “I really would love at the end of all this for us to be able to look back as a community and say, ‘Wow, we worked together through this and came up with a solution that is acceptable to the vast majority of people or stakeholders.’”

Streiff grew up in the neighborhood and still lives there with his family. He and many others believe the course, which charges only $29 for a nine-hole round on weekend mornings, is a critical characteristic of the area.

The golf club also offers a restaurant, bar and FootGolf course. A Food Truck Friday event associated with the course brings neighbors together. At a Sept. 5 meeting of the Tempe City Council, several residents spoke about what the course means to them. Sweeping his hair out of his eyes, 10-year-old Evan Rogers told the council that it was on the Shalimar course that he learned how to play.

Phoenix New Times was unable to contact the Neuheisels. However, Jane Neuheisel told the Tempe Tribune in June that the land has been for sale for a decade and the only offers were from developers looking to construct homes on the land. She and her husband are both 88 years old and were tired of waiting for someone willing to take over the golf course.

“We’re biting the bullet and doing this,” Jane Neuheisel told the Tempe Tribune. “It’s time. It was just time.”

Not black and white

In a statement provided to New Times, Cachet Homes stressed the city’s need for housing and the benefits new development would bring to the area.

“At a time when the Valley and the state are in the midst of a serious housing crisis, this first-class project will provide new homes for individuals and families who love Tempe like we do,” the statement said. “At the same time, the tax revenues created by new construction and new residents will help improve public safety, schools, and other important city services.”

That would seem to cast the Save Shalimar movement in a NIMBYist light. The acronym, which stands for “Not in My Backyard,” is shorthand for opposition to new housing projects, especially those of the affordable housing variety. What could be more antihousing than a water-intensive golf course?

The state certainly needs housing. According to an ASU housing study published earlier this year, Arizona is short 270,000 housing units. It’s no secret that the Phoenix area has felt the effects caused by a lack of housing.

However, the proposed development that would replace the golf course is not affordable housing. Instead, it would be a mix of rental properties, managed by BB Living, and two- and three-story single-family homes sold by Cachet Homes. Save Shalimar member Anne L’Ecuyer said that affordable housing is an important issue to her as a voter. But she also wants to preserve a beloved neighborhood feature.

“The current plan pretty obviously hasn’t been thought through enough,” L’Ecuyer said. “It hasn’t been through enough of a problem-solving process, and it’s kind of just bulldozing it to build expensive homes. And, this is really valuable Tempe green space.”

Preserving green space is a feature of the city’s Tempe Tomorrow: General Plan 2050, which was approved by the Tempe City Council last year. The plan does include goals for building “a diverse range of housing opportunities for all income levels and household types,” but it also calls for an increase in private open space, from 66 acres in 2023 to 385 acres by 2050.

That puts the Shalimar course at the center of a tug-of-war. Which goals are more important, the housing or the green space? Where is housing supposed to be built?

“This is a generational decision that has many complicated factors,” L’Ecuyer said. “It’s more than black and white, and we need the capacity to talk that way as a community.”

Zoning questions

Golf may be an untimed game, but the fight to save the Shalimar course is on the clock. In 1984, as a result of the legal battle that began five years earlier, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that an “implied restrictive covenant” existed on the land, limiting its use to a golf course. But that covenant will expire on Dec. 31 of this year.

Once it expires, the runway to building houses on the land becomes clearer, although a zoning battle still looms. The land currently is zoned as “agricultural,” which limits construction to one single-family unit per acre. According to the Tempe Tribune, the developers intend to build “roughly six luxury, single-family homes per acre as well as for-rent luxury townhouses.”

Save Shalimar opposes rezoning the land. That leaves Tempe city officials to balance respecting the legal sale of land between private parties while considering the will of those most affected by the change. While a formal plan for Shalimar has not been submitted to the Tempe Development Review Commission or to the Tempe City Council, according to city communications and marketing director Kris Baxter-Ging, the city wants to see community support for any rezoning of the area.

“Mayor Corey Woods has stated he would not be in favor of rezoning unless the residents from that area came to him in support of a particular plan,” Baxter-Ging said in an email. “That hasn’t happened.”

According to Streiff, the developers and the city have been in communication, with BB Living and Cachet Homes receiving informal feedback on their plans. In the next stage, Streiff said, the developers will seek input from neighbors. Those neighbors are eager to be heard.

Resident Julie Sweeney, who manages a restaurant called Mrs. Chicken, thinks residents should have a say when it comes to rezoning. She said she understands the need for housing, but ”feel(s) like there’s other options.”

“It’s a lot more homes than what I feel like would fit comfortably on that property and for the area, for traffic,” Sweeney said.

Traffic has been a sticking point in the past. Since 2010, the Shalimar Association and the Shalimar Golf Club have disputed the ownership of a strip of land called “Tract B, Shalimar West,” which is sandwiched between Alameda Drive to the north and Balboa Drive to the south. The association maintains ownership of the parcel, which would be needed as one of two ways to access a new housing development. Placing a new road there, the association wrote on its website, would create unwanted traffic.

So far, Streiff said, discussions with the developers have been cordial and productive. In its statement, Cachet Homes said it “look(s) forward to working with the City and residents who live near Shalimar to bring new housing to Tempe.” The Save Shalimar group knows it’ll likely have to bend. Its members say that change is inevitable and they are not opposed to all construction. But saving the golf course is important to them.

L’Ecuyer said her father, Robert, sits out on his patio which faces the first hole. He can’t can’t golf anymore, but the proximity to the course helps him stay connected. Balls whiz and roll into the patio, and he likes to hear the laughter from the golfers who shanked their shots in his direction. People choose to live there, and this is why.

When decisions are ultimately made about the course, those residents want a seat at the table next to the city and the private developers. And they want their microphones to be on.