The owners of the Sky Ranch Lodge, located atop Airport Mesa at 1105 Airport Road, are resurrecting a plan to construct 40 additional guest rooms on an adjacent vacant parcel to the west of the 94 guest rooms, and an indoor-outdoor event space.
The plan was announced during the Monday, Feb. 23, meeting of the Sedona-Oak Creek Airport Authority that drew a packed room of about 37 attendees.
The lodge opened in 1982 and is located on land leased from the SOCAA, a nonprofit that runs the Yavapai County-owned airport and surrounding property. The Sedona City Council previously unanimously approved a zone change from Community Facility to Lodging on April 22, 2014, after three years of discussions.
“My understanding is that one of the principals from Sky Ranch Lodge had passed, and with that so did this effort with his passing,” Airport Manager Ed Rose said. “So this is a mirror image of that effort, we’re looking for cooperation from the city of Sedona.”
“The expansion calls for an increase from 7.3 acres to 11.9 acres and will include 40 new lodging units, three affordable housing units and a 7,500-square-foot meeting facility on the property, located atop Airport Mesa,” the NEWS reported in 2014. “In addition, there will be a new in-ground pool, wedding lawn, additional parking and landscaping.”
Rose said the previously approved zone change is no longer in effect and Sky Ranch Lodge will have to start the process all over again, and there is not currently a timeline to submit the project to the city of Sedona Community Development Department.
“This is all going to be conducted with the intent of supporting the long-term viability of the airport and generating some additional funds for future capital improvement projects,” Coffman Associates Environmental Planner Alyson Hulet said.
“My role as an environmental planner was essentially to prepare the categorical exclusion for this project,” Hulet said, because the proposed expansion triggers a federal action that requires the property to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. And categorical exclusion allows the project to bypass the more intensive and detailed environmental assessment process.
Coffman Associates had a biologist conduct a site visit in May. The firm also completed a separate analysis of how visible the new buildings would be from adjacent neighborhoods and reported they believe the visual impact will be minimal.
“The monarch butterfly … wa s t e chni c a l l y observed on the [site], and it is a proposed listing [as an endangered] species, but there isn’t any suitable habitat within the parcel itself. And given the migratory nature of the species, it was noted that it would most likely just be using the site as a stopover,” Hulet said. “Therefore the report concluded that impacts, if any, would be extremely minor.”
The review also considered Section 4(f) resources under the federal Department of Transportation Act, which protects publicly owned parks, recreation areas and historic properties. Although the airport abuts land within the Coconino National Forest, Hulet said the nearest trail lies more than 0.2 miles away.
“Moving that [event space] back into the airport would be a huge benefit, [and] kill any kind of sound going over the edge, and we could probably eliminate most of those complaints that we get now,” SOCAA Treasurer Mike Schroeder said.
The expansion is projected to create 1,160 daily vehicle trips or entry or exists along the road according to a Traffic Impact Analysis done by Lee Engineering.
“Ultimately the report concluded that with the amount of traffic, they’re not expecting traffic delays either on the current service roads that would be used to access that site,” Hulet said, and that a second road is not currently being considered to offset the new traffic.
Other Airport Updates
Much of the SOCAA’s meeting time was spent discussing the board potentially accepting a $1,665,000 loan at 3.784%, over 23 years to increase water storage on Airport Mesa from the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, however the board decided to revisit it on Monday, March 9, at 10 a.m., Rose said.
Public comment on the proposal may be directed to ed@sedonaairport. org for this phase of the process before March 9. The document that will be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration because it occurs on airport property subject to federal oversight.
