Jan. 9—As the new year starts, Mesa is kicking off the process of updating its General Plan, a process it must undergo every 10 years.

The plan sets out a vision for development in the city and is a year-long effort involving surveys, discussions and meetings with the public and various stakeholders.

Mesa's long-range planning staff started this year's General Plan process at a meeting of Mesa's Economic Development Advisory Board on Jan. 3, and business leaders hit the ground running with some pointed suggestions about how to improve and implement it.

The board consists of executives from major Mesa companies and other community leaders, and while cordial, its members had many comments about developing and following through on a vision for Mesa up to 2050.

The completed plan must be approved by the council with a two-thirds vote and then goes to the Mesa voters in 2024.

City officials say the plan is consequential because it is supposed to guide decision-making about where in the city certain types of development take place and what type of zoning should be in place.

But the General Plan can also be amended between 10-year updates — and has been as recently as December, when Council OK'd a change in rules on when housing is allowed in medical and educational campus districts.

Responding to many of the comments was Mesa's new long-range planner, Mary Kopaskie-Brown, who assumed the job in November and will be responsible for shepherding the plan this year.

She previously served as a planner for Riverside, California, a town that's part the Los Angeles exurbs known as the Inland Empire.

In an interview with the Tribune last year, Kopaskie-Brown said she was drawn to the Mesa job in part because she thinks Riverside and Mesa face some of the same challenges.

There are similar dynamics, for example, between the two cities' and their larger urban neighbors — in Mesa's case Phoenix.

Kopaskie-Brown said a good general plan can reduce conflicts between landowners by identifying incompatible land uses before project applications come to the city.

"The best thing we can do as we're preparing the General Plan is to engage as many people as we can and engage as many businesses and developers and not-for-profits and just make sure that we can get as many voices put into that plan," she said.

Though it was the Economic Development Advisory Board's first meeting with Kopaskie-Brown, the members were assertive in expressing what they wanted to see in the new plan.

One of the main messages from business leaders was the city needs to be strong in sticking to the policies laid out in it, whatever those end up being.

Board President Rich Adams told city staff it's been a "constant battle" protecting designated employment areas from incompatible development like housing.

Board members cited the need to protect flight paths surrounding the city's two airports and keeping logistics warehouses out of the city's tech corridors, preserving those districts instead for high-quality technology and manufacturing jobs.

Board member Natascha Ovando-Karadsheh was pointed in urging the city to resist pressures to alter or compromise on the plan's guidelines.

"We have watched politics, and there are a few strong attorneys who are very integrated in the city and involved in land use and different things, and we have seen things go against the General Plan ... because of politics," she said.

"One little aggressive developer coming and pushing a land deal through can have just massive impact," she said. "We need to know who is going to make sure that we stand to the message and the vision of the plan."

Another theme of the discussion surrounding the 2050 General Plan was the need for a focus on redevelopment in Mesa, due the shrinking supply of undeveloped land for new projects.

A map of all the developed land in Mesa city limits shared by Kopaskie-Brown showed that 85% of Mesa's land area is developed.

While Economic Development Director Bill Jabjiniak said that still leaves plenty of open land for development, there was agreement that Mesa may need to pay more attention in the future to easing the process of replacing old buildings with new developments.

Kopaskie-Brown said built-in flexibility in the plan could help with that.

"We also could look at an adaptive reuse ordinance," she added. "Something like that really will help to kind of streamline what that process could look like."

The discussion also touched on quality of life in Mesa, with some of the biggest employers in town expressing an interest in matters beyond the economy.

Laura Snow, association vice president at Banner Health, said "healthy communities, walkable, safe places to exercise and recreate outside is also critical."

Jabjiniak said that one challenge of creating the vision for 2050 will be the role of cars.

He said that much of Mesa's development is still "autocentric," and while many people want to see a shift toward more walkability and transit, employers in certain parts of the city still want autocentric development.

Probably the biggest takeaway from the board's feedback was the importance of listening to Mesa's existing employers and protecting their needs in the future plan

Jabjiniak pointed out that about 80% of Mesa's job growth comes from existing employers.

One board member said the city should meet one-on-one with executives from Mesa's largest employers during the General Plan listening tour.

After giving the new planning director plenty of strong opinions on the General Plan process, the discussion closed down on good terms.

"I have good news for you," Adams said. "It doesn't get any tougher than this board, so it's going to be downhill from here and easier."

"We really, really do want the feedback that we're getting," Kopaskie-Brown told the board.