Slow market has little affect on developers

800 lots available for homes in and around Williams

Real estate prices may be falling after the big 2005 land grab in Williams, but that hasn't stopped developers from lining up to get in on the northland.

At a Jan. 11 Williams Rotary Club meeting, Bankers Real Estate owner/agent John Rushton did a brief presentation on the list of subdivisions in the works the city has approved and he says it's quite a lot.

"I think we're close to 800 plots, plus or minus," Rushton said.

Starting with the developments near the Elephant Rocks Golf Course is the final fourth phase of Highland Meadows, which started in 1997. The fourth phase is a longer narrow strip going north and south coming off of Country Club Road across from the entrance to the golf course. Highland Meadows has a total of 298 lots with about 15 left to construct.

Larry Pittenger of L.P.'s Excavating has a smaller 20-lot subdivision called Highland Meadows West next to it that is currently under construction and there's also the 105-lot Highland Meadows North, which has been in the works for some time.

"They ran into problems when they hired an excavator from outside the area," Rushton said of Highland Meadows North. "They ran into a tremendous amount of rock they weren't familiar with."

That project should have been completed over the summer and because buyers were expecting their lots sooner, many backed out when they visited and saw the subdivision incomplete.

Rushton said that Bankers had about 80 percent of the Highland Meadows North lots reserved, but lost 70 percent of them when potential buyers saw the delay. Now the projected completion date for most of the project's infrastructure and roads is sometime in May.

"That just goes to show how important it is that these projects and the developers are on track and keeping pace," Rushton said.

Next, of course, comes the highly anticipated ESCALANTE 280-lot development. Going east from there, map readers run into the controversial Forest Canyon Estates development just south of Williams proper with about 120 lots.

Up north along Airport Road is Cataract Creek Estates with 82 lots surrounded by Ponderosa Ridge, an 89-acre project with 155 lots.

Finally, there's Sycamore Point just south of Interstate-40 on the east side with 40 lots, which are built out now and in the sales process.

Those were the developments Rushton covered, but in addition to those are Williams Hill Estates just east of downtown, south of Route 66 and the railroad with water allocation for 80 lots, Pinecrest II just west of the Williams Elementary-Middle School with just over 82 lots and The Reserve with 16 lots southwest of the Country Club Drive westward curve.

Aside from the Escalante project, all of the developments have received water allocation for their lots. The ESCALANTE development originally received a green light for just 50 lots, but has been granted water allocation for another 50 due to delays in the drilling of a new well.

That future well is being paid for by the ESCALANTE developers in consideration for first dibs and fee waivers, and the city is currently in negotiations with a private party to purchase land for an acceptable well site.

The obvious question with all of the projected subdivisions is, "Does the city currently have enough water without the new well?"

The answer, according Williams Water Department Supervisor Ron Stilwell, is yes.

"If we had a direct line coming from the active Dogtown well field, then with our existing wells and surface water, yes, we could handle it," Stilwell said.

The construction of a direct water line from the Dogtown well field and the city's water plant is a project currently under discussion between city council members.