By Rodney Haas | Casa Grande Dispatch
In 2006, at the peak of the housing boom, a new phrase was coined to represent the area stretching from Prescott to Sierra Vista: the Arizona Sun Corridor.
Experts predicted that by 2040, the megapolitan region would have a population of between 10 and 15 million people.
Then the housing bubble burst and those figures were scaled back. The counties of Maricopa, Pinal and Pima combined are now projected to have 8.5 million residents by 2040.
“I say it’s going to happen, but it’s going to be slower than what was expected,” said Jim Dinkle, executive director of the Central Arizona Regional Economic Development Foundation. “I’ve always said, in 20 years I think this will be a megalopolis where Tucson and Phoenix are connected and we are right between them. I think it will be built out in both directions.”
The strategic location for Pinal County being smack dab in the middle of the two
cities, along with access to two major interstates and a rail line that connects Los Angeles to Texas, provides the region with great potential for growth and to become an economic powerhouse.
“Everybody talks about Southern California being one of the world’s largest economies, and I really do believe in my heart of hearts that this corridor in
Arizona will be one of the world’s largest economies,” Dinkle said. “I know that is brave and bold in making a statement like that, but I really do believe that from Flagstaff to the border, I think we have that potential to make this really a powerhouse.”
It’s a potential that hasn’t fallen on deaf ears within Pinal County.
“It presents a lot of opportunities,” said John Ellinwood, chief deputy with the Pinal County Assessor’s Office. “There’s talk in the future of putting in that Interstate 11, that Las Vegas interstate would come into Casa Grande and that would be a wonderful development for the county.”
During the peak of the housing boom people were buying homes in Pinal County and commuting to their jobs in either Phoenix or Tucson. It’s a trend that continues today and it’s something that Mike Orr, of Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, thinks will continue.
“Pinal County is kind of a dormitory county at the moment, but I think the number of housing units will grow over the next 20 years,” Orr said. “I think Arizona is an infectious place to move to because of the weather and the low cost of living
compared to the other urban areas of the North and East and even the West.”
Orr said he thinks the growth rates will return to what they were in the early 2000s.
“When people move to Arizona from other states and other countries, they tend to congregate around the central part of Arizona, and the utmost way to build new communities is right in between Phoenix and Tucson,” Orr said. “I think Casa Grande is right in the target zone for new growth and in fact Pinal County as a whole is likely to be one of the fastest-growing counties in the country in the next two decades.”
