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Bill Gates buys big chunk of land some 25000 acres about 30 miles west of here to build a new high tech city for 80,000 residents to be called Belmont. High tech manufacturing, lots of tech desk jobs, self-contained, green, streets with mostly driverless cars, and in general, pie-in-the-sky a la mode.
You have to understand that the Arizona desert is littered with big tracts of land you'd call ghost towns except there was never any town there. Roads graded in the dirt, sometimes paved, sometimes even with street signs, but nary a building to be seen. Some times they were real estate scams that just tried to sell enough lots to make a profit without worrying about how someone might actually live out in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes it was an honest, but not very well informed attempt to actually build a community. Gates' Belmont has two major things going for it that a lot of the ghost developments didn't, namely access to power (both a nuclear power plant and lots of sun for future solar power) and water (from a major canal from the Colorado River leading into west Phoenix). But it's missing a couple important things to get it started, namely a major employer or three who want to build new campuses out in the desert and transportation other than one existing highway which is already overloaded between here and downtown. (The Phoenix airport is about 20 miles east of me beyond downtown on that overloaded highway. The railroad is close by here, but again about 30 miles of rough country east of Belmont). Add to that the state's total disinterest in providing funding for education, and Bill's company is going to have some heavy sales chores ahead of them to get this project more than dirt roads scraped in the desert.
I don't say it can't be done, but building in existing communities with things like surface streets, sewer and flood control systems all ready in place, would seem to make a lot more sense to a company interested in Arizona. There is plenty of open space to build your high tech, green, campus within 30 miles of the airport on this side of the White Tank Mountains. Why isolate yourself on the backside of the mountains other than to be trendy?
You have to understand that the Arizona desert is littered with big tracts of land you'd call ghost towns except there was never any town there. Roads graded in the dirt, sometimes paved, sometimes even with street signs, but nary a building to be seen. Some times they were real estate scams that just tried to sell enough lots to make a profit without worrying about how someone might actually live out in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes it was an honest, but not very well informed attempt to actually build a community. Gates' Belmont has two major things going for it that a lot of the ghost developments didn't, namely access to power (both a nuclear power plant and lots of sun for future solar power) and water (from a major canal from the Colorado River leading into west Phoenix). But it's missing a couple important things to get it started, namely a major employer or three who want to build new campuses out in the desert and transportation other than one existing highway which is already overloaded between here and downtown. (The Phoenix airport is about 20 miles east of me beyond downtown on that overloaded highway. The railroad is close by here, but again about 30 miles of rough country east of Belmont). Add to that the state's total disinterest in providing funding for education, and Bill's company is going to have some heavy sales chores ahead of them to get this project more than dirt roads scraped in the desert.
I don't say it can't be done, but building in existing communities with things like surface streets, sewer and flood control systems all ready in place, would seem to make a lot more sense to a company interested in Arizona. There is plenty of open space to build your high tech, green, campus within 30 miles of the airport on this side of the White Tank Mountains. Why isolate yourself on the backside of the mountains other than to be trendy?
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Heaven forbid you pay any taxes -- because then you'd have less money to buy things and have your dream life. Everyone wants a tax break or loop-hole. We're all afraid of paying more taxes.
I call it capitalism gone insane.