The following is a letter put out by the DDCS board in response to a letter Protect Our Preserve (POP) intends to send out to supporters of the DDC which will hopefully open their eyes as to the issues with putting the DDC in the Preserve and the advantages to locating it outside the Preserve. The letter DDCS sent out has been annotated to show how they are propagating misinformation, exactly what they accuse POP of doing. POP deals with the facts, not with liberal interpretations to justify an indefensible position.
Dear Friends:
It is disappointing to those of us who have supported the McDowell Sonoran Preserve since its inception to have the Desert Discovery Center – a City of Scottsdale project that the community has been working on for more than 25 years – subjected to a relentless disinformation campaign.
Beware of Fake News. We urge you not to be misled by the misinformation and inaccurate claims of either Protect Our Preserve or NoDDC because both continue to misrepresent the facts about the Center. You may receive a communication from Protect Our Preserve and it is important for you to have accurate information if you are asked questions by others in the community. Yes it is very important you have accurate information and this letter isn’t giving it to you, see below.
- The Desert Discovery Center Scottsdale’s City contract requires a business plan to address costs and funding sources as well as a minimum of 10% of funding from private sector contributions. True and none of us will have any idea of what the business plan will look like or depend on until the FINAL plan is presented to the city council. For this reason, nothing in the Protect Our Preserve letter addresses the business plan other than there is more flexibility if the DDC is located outside the Preserve.
- Preserve funds are one of the potential funding sources identified by the City (already authorized by public vote and thus not requiring additional taxes). Other sources include Bed Taxes paid by visitors, the General Fund and bonds. No funding decision has been made. The city council has already ruled out General Funds (they have NO spare funds there) and bonds (because they know the public won’t pass a bond to fund the DDC), leaving only the Preserve Funds and Bed Taxes, but Bed Taxes have to be used for many tourism projects, leaving little for the DDC. So it is known that one of the reasons they want the DDC in the Preserve is so they can use Preserve funds to design and build it. A few years ago, one city council member even tried to put a hold on all future land acquisitions to freeze the Preserve funds. Facts don’t lie.
- The Center is intended to be consistent with the Preserve Ordinance, which allows the City to provide educational and research uses in the Preserve. The DDC satisfies a goal stated in the Preserve Ordinance to provide education, which the MSC already does, but the DDC also violates many of the rules in the Preserve Ordinance so to say it is consistent with the Preserve Ordinance is simply false. The DDCS position on the Preserve rules is that a municipal use does not have to conform to them, but the Preserve Ordinance was drafted and passed in 2000, after the DDC was moved to the Preserve, and there are NO exclusions or exceptions for the DDC, or any municipal use, in the Ordinance.
- The Center was approved at the Gateway along with the existing trailhead by the City Council in 2007, and is being designed with sensitivity to maintaining the trailhead experience. No one outside the DDCS knows what they are planning so we can’t comment on the design, but regardless of the design, the location is the issue and that issue won’t change with whatever the design is.
- The Center is being designed to provide significantly enhanced educational programming to complement, not compete with, existing offerings by the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy. No one outside the DDCS knows what they are planning, but early on the DDCS completely cut the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy (MSC) out and didn’t include them in any of the programming. The city council forced DDCS to work with the MSC because the MSC is the city’s partner on the Preserve. Also the research branch proposed by the DDCS will definitely compete with the existing MSC research branch that already works with outside groups including ASU. There also is no doubt that a DDC in the Preserve will compete with existing MSC educational hikes and lectures in the Preserve, which do conform to the Preserve Ordinance.
- The City used an online comment form to obtain feedback to guide Center planning, not to be a yes/no survey on the Center. City staff noted 825 invalid email addresses and other anomalies in survey responses, thus they cannot be used to accurately reflect citizen opinion. Even with the suspected invalid responses removed, and it is assumed that all of them opposed the DDC, over 80% of the remaining responses clearly opposed a DDC in the Preserve and in two other surveys the city ran, at the only two public meetings held, over 95% of the respondents opposed the DDC in the Preserve.
- An interpretive/educational center was included within the Preserve in the original McDowell Mountain Task Force Report to the City Council in 1993, and has been part of Preserve planning ever since. True, but the Preserve Ordinance, passed in 2000, specifically prohibited some uses mentioned in this report, in the Preserve Access Area report (1999), as well as uses envisioned for the DDC. You need the whole story, not part of it.
Additional misrepresentations by opposition groups are addressed below:
- The Center would not be a commercial project but rather another municipal use like libraries, parks, museums, cultural centers, many of which include a small café/shop or charge admission fees, which does not make them commercial uses. The center will charge a fee, have concessions which must be profitable, pay for staff, etc. all of which certainly sound like a commercial operation. The other city venues mentioned are not Preserves, intended to remain free of development and commercial activity.
- The Center is not being planned as a $75 million project. That figure is from a prior study that is not being implemented. The cost has not been determined, but in response to public feedback it is being planned to be smaller and less expensive than the previous study indicated. That may or may not be true, but the issue in the Protect Our Preserve letter is the LOCATION, not the cost. Cost will be a future issue once it is determined.
- The Center would not grade 30 acres, but rather is being designed with a minimalist footprint within the 30-acre boundary designated by the City. That may or may not be true, but the issue in the Protect Our Preserve letter is the LOCATION, not the amount of land disturbed. The impact on the Preserve will be a future issue once it is determined.
- The Center is not being designed as a tourism/corporate event center or to have jeep tours or outdoor night-time rock concerts. The City paid the highest price of any parcel in the Preserve for the Gateway site so that the trailhead and Center would be located well away from homes. It certainly is a tourism center and has been sold as such. According to DDCS, it will have nighttime operations, a violation of the Preserve Ordinance. We have not specified how they will use nighttime operations, only that they intend to violate the ordinance and have some nighttime operations.
- The Center is not being planned to need “subsidies into perpetuity,” but instead to be self-sustaining with an annual development funding goal for memberships and corporate/individual giving, in addition to earned revenue, just like other non-profits: Phoenix Zoo, Desert Botanical Gardens, Phoenix and Scottsdale art museums and performing arts centers. That may or may not be true, but the issue in the Protect Our Preserve letter is the LOCATION, not the running cost. Running cost will be a future issue once it is determined but we know the taxpayers will be responsible for any overruns and in previous studies the estimates for attendance have been over stated and are about twice what the paid attendance is at the Desert Botanical Garden, a successful and well known venue.
For additional information about the Center, including Thinc Design’s inspiring Project Definition Report, please visit our website.
Thank you for taking the time to be informed, not fooled. Please, if you hear something that sounds outrageous, it likely is, and we encourage you to let us know so that we can keep providing information to the community. If you know anyone or any group that would like a presentation also, let us know. We are eager to share the exciting vision that is evolving for the Desert Discovery Center. True, do not be fooled. If you hear something that has no factual backup you should try to find out the truth. Visit protectourpreserve.org where we have assembled all the documents relating to both the Preserve and the DDC, including a history timeline so you will know what the facts are, not the misinformation DDCS puts out to sell the project and the location.
Looking forward to working with you in 2017,
DESERT DISCOVERY CENTER SCOTTSDALE, INC.