The Casa Grande Dispatch  is reporting that little by little, the pieces of PhoenixMart could soon start be falling into place.

The Casa Grande Board of Adjustment on Tuesday approved a temporary use permit that allows PhoenixMart developers to install signs and landscaping on 7 acres of the proposed gateway into the sourcing center.

Once work on the entryway begins, other projects will follow, PhoenixMart Project Manager Brad Holyoak told the Board of Adjustment members. “Our goal is that work will continuously be happening on site until the project is complete next year,” he said.

While a building permit application will not be submitted to the city until May, Holyoak said developers are eager to begin smaller projects. Developing the entryway first made sense as it pinpoints the site location, he said.

“We are excited to show progress, to identify where our site is and make it attractive to the public and investors,” Holyoak said.

The monument signs are a pair of L-shaped concrete walls about 10 feet tall and 60 feet wide with the PhoenixMart logo and lettering. They will be set back about 120 feet from the edge of Florence Boulevard, leaving the developers plenty of room to negotiate with the Arizona Department of Transportation regarding the right of way and road improvements.

The company is awaiting ADOT’s approval on its traffic impact analysis.

Developers believe the 120-foot setback provides enough room to build turning lanes, he said. “If it’s not enough, the risk is on us and we’ll adjust our site plan to conform,” Holyoak said.

PhoenixMart developers plan other improvements to Florence Boulevard near the site, including curbing and landscaping, but Holyoak said a sidewalk is not planned.

“ADOT has told us that their standard is to not provide a walkway on the side of their highway,” he said.

The temporary use permit approved Tuesday allows the signs and landscaping to remain in place for a year.

It can be renewed administratively for another year, but for the monument signs and trees to remain in place permanently, comprehensive sign and landscaping plans need approval by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission. Should the commission reject the development’s sign and landscape plan, the monuments and plants would be removed or altered to conform to requirements.

PhoenixMart is expected to open next year with space for 1,740 tenants to establish wholesale showrooms. Developers have said PhoenixMart could bring nearly 9,000 jobs to Pinal County.

For full story go to Casa Grande news at Trivalley.com

 

 

 

AJO, Arizona – Arizona’s first State Health Assessment listed Ajo among Arizona communities with the highest health risk outside of the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. Conducted by the Arizona Department of Health Services, the assessment considered factors such as access to health care facilities and professionals, maternal care, mortality and environmental health.

Income is a major social determinant of health when considering health disparities and level of health risk of an individual or a community. The ability to access health services, prevention, and treatment depends on insurance and having the capacity to pay. Lack of income also plays a role in families’ ability to access healthy foods; maintain safe, affordable housing; and stay in school. According to the US Census, 19% (1.2 million) of Arizona families live in poverty. When low income is combined with health risk, the result is an elevated risk for poor health outcomes for families in that community.

The highest health risk communities Statewide, 2008-2012:

• Ajo
• Bisbee
• Casa Grande
• Coolidge
• Douglas
• Eloy
• Globe-Hayden
• Holbrook
• Kingman
• Round Valley
• Winslow
• Tribal Communities: Hopi Nation, Havasupai Indian Community, Hualapai Tribe, Navaho Tribe, Pasqua Yaqui Tribe, San Carlos Apache Tribe, Tohono O’odham Nation and White Mountain Apache Tribe

(Source: Arizona Department of Health Services)

The list of services one can’t get in Ajo is long: no prenatal care, no specialty doctors, no nursing home, no home-health nurses, no physical therapy. Desert Senita health center now has the only pharmacy in town after the owner of the other pharmacy retired. The health center does have a lab on site, but insurance regulations dictate what kind of tests it can do.  The lab often has to send patients or lab work to Phoenix or Tucson – 130 miles away – to be tested.

Will Humble, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said the assessment will help his team make decisions on health care services around the state.

“One of our tasks is to help identify those areas that are in most need and put together evidence-based health outcomes that are targeted so we pick and choose the areas we’re likely to be most effective,” Humble said.

To better understand the health status of Arizona’s population, the Arizona Department of Health Services partnered with each of the county health departments to conduct a Community Health Assessment. This assessment included the collection and analysis of data from the community and information from a variety of sources. The result of this collaborative process is the State Health Assessmnet (SHA) report.

The SHA report helps to prioritize health issues, communities in need and effectively allocate resources to improve the health and wellness of all Arizonans. The SHA report is one of the three accreditation prerequisites set forth by the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), and will help ADHS deliver the core functions which encompass assessment, policy development and assurance. ADHS is partnering with local health departments and other public health organizations to accomplish this collaborative effort. The goal of accreditation is to assess the health department’s ability to deliver these three core functions, in addition to the ten essential services of public health. The next one.

Since first announcing its project, PhoenixMart, in the fourth quarter of 2011, developers AZ Sourcing and Central Arizona Regional Center will break ground and begin construction on Thursday, November 7, right on schedule. Groundbreaking is set to begin at 9:30 a.m.on the new PhoenixMart development, located at Florence Boulevard near Overfield Road, about two miles east of The Promenade in Casa Grande.

PhoenixMart will be a 1.7-million-square-foot wholesale sourcing facility, being built on 585 acres, to be the first global commerce center of its kind in the United States, according to developers. It is expected to create more than 9,000 local jobs and boost U.S. manufacturing by connecting global buyers with sellers, according to project developers.

While the project is heavily financed by Chinese investors, PhoenixMart has nothing to do with bringing in Chinese business and industry. Rather, its focus is to provide a way to bring American industry into the global market like the Chinese have done over the last 20 years.

PhoenixMart is based off of a development that occurred quite by accident in a small rural town called Yiwu in China back in the 1980s. As China began to experience its own industrial revolution in the 1980s, small businesses began to pop up everywhere. But there wasn’t a central location through which these business owners could market their products. So what developed was referred to as a “farmer’s market on steroids,” as these little manufacturers and business owners flocked to a central location, which started with only a couple of hundred square feet and a tin roof overhead. It was a one-stop shop convenience buying opportunity. Nearly 30 years later, that same little farmer’s market has become a 43 million square foot facility and has virtually turned into a city. It is the biggest place of its kind in the world for wholesale sales of small and midsize manufacturers throughout China. If you were a small manufacturer, then suddenly Walmart, Costco and other large retailers could find you.

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao will be among the federal, state and municipal officials on-hand Thursday for the groundbreaking of PhoenixMart, according to a press release from the project developers. U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, Casa Grande mayor Bob Jackson and PhoenixMart president Jeremy Schoenfelder also are expected to speak at the event.

“Even though it was shovel-ready long ago, its investors were stuck waiting for EB-5 visas. I’m glad we could work together and help clear the way for this important economic effort to launch, ” said Kirkpatrick.  PhoenixMart will showcase goods sold wholesale by about 2,000 manufacturers and distributors in various categories. “The complex will also include a commerce hub that, when completed, will be the largest single-level construction in the country, spanning three football fields wide and nine football fields long,” the press release from PhoenixMart developers said. The facility is to have 1,750 showroom suites and is expected by developers to be fully occupied by the time it opens its doors, projected for late next year.

For more information or to keep an eye on the progress of the project, visit their website at https://phoenixmart.com/, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Linkedin. Vendors can also lease space on the PhoenixMart’s e-commerce site coming soon, www.ephoenixmart.com