Rogue Columnist Jon Talton GETS REAL > Very Real: Big Real Estate Deals

Water is the most precious resource on this planet.
Using his pen "warmed up in hell", Seattle Times columnist Jon Talton is hitting the tip of an iceberg to reveal what's underneath the fortunes made in real estate here in Arizona - and both the scarcity limitations and high costs of controlling and delivering this commodity in the desert. 

Here in Mesa it's more-or-less the same story starting way back in 1877 with The Desert Act. Mormon "Pioneers" incorporated what was to become The City of Mesa the following year in 1878. In effect controlling and owning the water here.
Today, after all the multi-million$ of bond issues - the 'costs of doing business' for the construction, operations and maintenance of water treatment facilities - and wastewater treatment plants - approaches over ____million$$$$$$$ per year taking the biggest chunk of the Budget Pie Charts, paid for by taxpayers to service the debt. [see below]

Your MesaZona blogger prematurely popped and copped the original story from Business Real Estate Weekly in a post on Nov 06 here REALLY BIG Real Estate News
Jon Talton tells all in this fine piece of reporting:
Bill Gates buys Arizona land — hilarity, or tragedy, ensues

Originally published November 9, 2017 at 11:08 am Updated November 9, 2017 at 6:03 pm

Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment recently purchased an $80 million stake in desert land west of Phoenix. Unless Gates plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn’t tell him.

By Jon Talton Special to The Seattle Times

 

"The big news this week in metropolitan Phoenix is that Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment purchased an $80 million stake in desert land to the west of town. Boosters are excited because powerful development interests hope to turn this 24,000 acres into 80,000 houses, pushing sprawl farther into the pristine and threatened Sonoran Desert.
Unless BillG plans to turn the land into a preserve, he might want to know a few things that the locals didn’t tell him.

(And to put my cards on the table, I am a fourth-generation Arizonan, former columnist for the Phoenix newspaper, and continue to write, pro bono, a blog on Arizona history and issues.
First, Arizona doesn’t have enough water to continue these kind of developments, no matter what the mouthpieces of the Real Estate Industrial Complex say. . .

Second, climate change poses a clear and present danger to Arizona now. Summers are significantly hotter and lasting longer than a few decades ago. Massive wildfires are common, another new phenomenon. Whether Phoenix will even be inhabitable by mid-century is an open question. Already, it is a man-made environment totally dependent on electricity to power air conditioning and gasoline delivered by vulnerable pipelines. Environmental challenges are enormous beyond global warming. Phoenix has some of the dirtiest air in the country. . .
Arizona has a long history of land fraud . . .
That mostly ended in the 1970s — and went legit, first boosted by the savings-and-loan bubble, then massive freeway construction to make worthless desert and farmland valuable for sprawl development, and finally with the subprime and housing bubble of the 2000s. Unlike other peer metros, real estate in Phoenix isn’t driven by a diverse economy — it is the most powerful driver of the economy.
In addition to destroying precious wilderness, rural areas and farmland, sprawl is terribly inefficient and costly. It requires expensive infrastructure and Arizona requires few impact fees. It adds to greenhouse gas emissions and long commutes because of car-dependency. It hurts civic cohesion. All these and more are externalities never priced into these plays. Sprawl is one of the worst social-engineering mistakes in American history. But as a short-term proposition, it can be very profitable for developers and investors . . .
Link to original Source > https://www.seattletimes.com

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Here in Mesa there was a canned over-the-top highly staged "press conference" yesterday in the parking lot behind City Hall celebrating 100 Years of Utilities.

You can search for it on Mesa Channel 11 if you want ...

or

See this:

https://mesazona.blogspot.com/2016/06/city-of-mesa-fy201516-budget-pie-charts.html