Key Points
- The Florence Town Council approved a rezoning at Felix Road and Hunt Highway on Aug. 4.
- The old zoning allowed up to 408 apartment units there. The change allows 80 to 160 smaller single-family homes instead.
- Councilmember Tony Bencina said he has been told prices may start around $270,000.
- Construction could begin by late 2026 or early 2027.
- About 14 acres at the corner keep commercial zoning, which still permits some apartments. The developer envisions a grocery-anchored center with small shops and services.
- A traffic study projects about 20 percent fewer daily trips. A five-lane Hunt Highway widening is also set to start this month.
- The corner is part of owner El Dorado Holdings’ roughly 4,200 acres in the area. A new master plan for those holdings is coming.
FLORENCE, AZ — Smaller single-family homes are now planned for most of the northwest corner of Felix Road and Hunt Highway, on lots as small as 3,000 square feet. The corner itself stays zoned for commercial use. On Aug. 4, the Florence Town Council unanimously approved the Merrill Ranch rezoning of Parcel 14, which converts nearly 20 acres long designated for commercial and higher-density housing to single-family lots. The old zoning allowed up to 408 apartment units on the property. The new zoning allows 80 to 160 houses instead. About 14 of the site’s 34 acres, along Hunt Highway, are still set aside for commercial development.
Greg Davis, president of Iplan Consulting, the land-use firm representing owner El Dorado Holdings, which holds the property through El Dorado Merrill Ranch, LLC, told the Planning and Zoning Commission in June that work would begin by the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027, with full buildout in approximately two years. Meanwhile, Councilmember Tony Bencina said he has been told the smaller homes will start around $270,000. He called them “a great starter home for smaller families.”
Traffic is projected to fall compared with what the old zoning allowed. According to a trip study, the new plan would generate about 20 percent less daily traffic. However, town staff still expect road impacts and are pressing for broader improvements along Felix Road and Hunt Highway.
What the Merrill Ranch Rezoning Allows
The parcel is part of the 5,800-plus-acre Merrill Ranch master plan, first approved in 2003 and updated in 2007. Within that plan, this site’s old zoning was designed mainly for commercial uses, though it also allowed housing. Any homes built there had to be apartments, at eight to 24 units per acre on up to half the parcel, according to the applicant’s presentation.
Instead, the approved change places single-family zoning on the northern portion, at only four to eight homes per acre. Senior Planner Maricella Benitez told the council the lots will stay in line with nearby neighborhoods. “We’re not looking at apartments or cluster homes, those kinds of things,” she said. Additionally, Davis told commissioners the houses will likely be one to two stories, aimed at the upper end of the entry-level market. The zoning itself still allows up to three stories, a limit this amendment leaves unchanged.
Creating a buffer between existing neighborhoods and the commercial corner was the main purpose of the zone change, according to the staff report. Homes in the developing Parkside at Anthem community back up to the site’s west edge, and more residential is planned to the north.
Davis said the change means those neighbors will have houses similar to their own next door, instead of “potentially three-story apartments behind them.” In addition, Community Development Director AJ Monroe told commissioners a wall will surround the adjacent homes to the west and north, and roughly 100 feet of landscaped buffer and setback would likely separate the new houses from the on-site commercial area.
Two building rules also loosen for the new lots. Minimum rear yards shrink from 15 feet to 10 feet, meaning houses can sit closer to the back property line. The application says the extra room allows larger covered patios and more single-story homes on the small lots. Separately, a design guideline caps how much of a home’s street-facing wall can be taken up by garage doors, keeping garages from dominating the streetscape. That cap will no longer apply to lots narrower than 40 feet, where the applicant argued the standard is impractical for the alternative home designs planned for the smaller lots.
Developer Pitches a Grocery-Anchored Center for the Corner
The developer has retail in mind for the commercial corner. “We do still think that the corner of Hunt and Felix demands attention for commercial,” Davis told the council, adding that the retained acreage is “enough for a grocery anchor center.” As for the mix: “We think that the residential projects need to be served by a neighborhood level grocery store, shoe store, shoe repair, nail salon, et cetera.” Furthermore, he said the town should get the benefit of the tax revenue that retail would produce.
According to Davis, the new housing supports that retail, because rooftops need to be in place for commercial development to follow.
North-South Freeway Pulls the Intense “Node” Away
When the Merrill Ranch land plan was approved in 2007, planners stacked the community’s heaviest uses at this corner. “This area was seen as the node for what would become the intense area of the development,” Davis said. In other words, Felix and Hunt was expected to become a very busy intersection, so employment, commercial and high-density residential uses were concentrated there.
However, the Arizona Department of Transportation’s announced North-South Freeway — which Davis called the Loop 505 — changed the picture. The planned route cuts through El Dorado’s overall property, so those uses are migrating northeast toward the future freeway corridor and its off-ramps. “When you drive through the valley, you see the major power centers, the major industrial centers are all located along freeways and highway corridors. And so that’s what’s going to happen here as well,” Davis said.
That migration leaves Felix and Hunt as “a typical arterial intersection, which just can’t support several hundred acres of industrial employment, et cetera,” he said. For that reason, he called full commercial buildout of the site “kind of unrealistic.” The application also cites online shopping cutting demand for storefronts and rising demand for moderately priced homes.
A 34-Acre Piece of a 4,200-Acre Plan
The parcel is a small slice of El Dorado’s holdings in the area, which Davis said total roughly 4,200 acres. That figure reflects the company’s current land, while the full Merrill Ranch master plan approved two decades ago covers more than 5,800 acres.
That bigger effort is already underway. “Forty-two hundred acres takes quite a bit of work to resolve problems associated with land use, drainage, utilities, traffic, et cetera. So El Dorado and I have been working with the town for well over a year on how to solve those major problems for that bigger project,” Davis said. He added that a new master plan application covering El Dorado’s full holdings is on its way, with much more detail to come at later hearings. More amendments will arrive as the 20-year-old plan is updated, he said, and Parcel 14 is coming first because demand for it exists now.
Traffic Projected to Drop as Felix Road and Hunt Highway Grow
A trip study by Stanley Consultants compared full buildout of the Felix Road and Hunt Highway corner under both zonings. For the new plan, the study assumed 90 houses, a commercial center of about 130,000 square feet, and a few dozen apartment units still permitted on the commercial land. For the approved 2007 zoning, it assumed a much larger commercial center of about 314,000 square feet plus more apartments. The result: 9,516 daily trips under the new plan, versus 11,864 under the old one. That works out to 2,348 fewer daily trips, with the biggest drop — roughly a third — during the evening rush hour.
Even so, town staff urged caution, writing that “a combined residential and commercial area will increase the traffic impact, despite fewer units.” Benitez told the council the response will reach beyond the site. “Felix is a hot topic, so going forward, we’ll be working with the applicant to make sure that we can work on the roadways and traffic and improvements,” she said. Similarly, Monroe told commissioners that Felix Road is expected to double in size in the coming years, along with further buildout of Hunt Highway.
As for getting in and out, Monroe said the new neighborhood will have entrances from Hunt Highway, Felix Road and National Way, with exact locations set later in the design process.
Hunt Highway Widening Brings Five Lanes and a School Land Snag
Help is already scheduled for Hunt Highway. The town and Pinal County are jointly widening the road from Franklin Road to Magma Road.
Senior Civil Engineer Lindsey Randall told commissioners in June that Florence’s portion is estimated to begin construction this month. The county hopes to start its stretch once the town’s part is complete. The roughly $6 million project will give the road two northbound lanes and two southbound lanes, she said, and it is expected to stay open, with work likely taking place during the day. As the Pinal Post reported in March, the design also includes a center turn lane, making five lanes in all, and the Florence section is expected to take about eight months to build.
Right-of-way remains the project’s biggest open question. Randall told commissioners in June that the town is still negotiating with American Leadership Academy to acquire land for the widening. The school sits at Franklin Road and Hunt Highway, and the widening needs right-of-way across its land. The town had assumed that easement was dedicated through the school’s original site plan, but it never was, and Florence, not the county, must acquire it. At the March council update, Councilmember Tony Bencina called that situation “ridiculous,” arguing the wider road directly benefits the school, and the school has since retained legal counsel. In June, Randall added that staff have been in contact with American Leadership Academy about its traffic, noting the new turn lane and signal technology should help. The county’s stretch remained held up as of late June by alignment negotiations with the Gila River Indian Community and right-of-way at Arizona Farms Road.
One Written Objection, No Speakers at Two Hearings
Formal opposition amounted to a single written comment. A required neighborhood meeting, held in early May at the Florence Community Center, drew no residents, according to the staff report, although Bencina said he attended. Staff did receive one email from a household in Anthem at Merrill Ranch opposing the Parcel 14 rezone. The email cited unwanted additional home construction nearby and traffic concerns.
Subsequently, no members of the public spoke at either public hearing: the commission’s June 25 session, which ended in a 4-0 recommendation to approve, or the council’s Aug. 4 hearing.
Council Comments and a Unanimous Vote
Councilmember Nicole Buccellato called the proposal “a pretty good workaround” for the 2007 plan. “We absolutely need some jobs out there, some commercial to help service those people in that area,” she said, pointing to the volume of housing approved in the community nearly two decades ago.
Bencina, calling the houses more affordable, noted the yards will be a little smaller and the change reduces the total number of homes. “It’s a great little project,” he said. Afterward, the council adopted the rezoning by unanimous vote.
After the Parcel 14 Zone Change: Detailed Maps and a Bigger Master Plan
The vote sets the framework, but the detailed maps come next. Upcoming site plans and subdivision maps will lock in streets, lot layouts and required open space. Meanwhile, El Dorado’s larger master plan for the surrounding area heads to future hearings, where the freeway-driven redesign of the broader area will get a fuller public review. For now, the Merrill Ranch rezoning defines what can rise there: single-family houses to the north and commercial development to the south.
