Village center to anchor new Summerhaven

The third season of rebuilding from the ashes of the Aspen Fire will feature the first public investment in a village center whose plans include a privately built lodge and restaurant on the site of the Alpine Lodge, destroyed along with 334 other buildings when fire roared through these forested canyons on June 19, 2003.

To create a pedestrian-friendly layout for redevelopment, Pima County hired Hunter Contracting to build a bridge over Sabino Creek, which currently flows under the village's main road in a metal culvert and flows over it in a good rain.

Hunter won a $2.5 million contract to build the bridge, stabilize the creek bank, rebuild the road, add parking lots and prepare a pad for a community center that the county hopes to complete by the end of the year. Road work begins in mid-April.

The community center will be linked by footbridge over Sabino Creek to a restaurant, a lodge, retail shops and rental condominiums. Bob and Fran Zimmerman, who own much of the commercially zoned property on the mountain, along with partners who own the site of the destroyed Alpine Lodge, hope to begin construction next summer.

In addition, developer Jim Campbell bought three lots south of Zimmerman's proposed lodge and is trying to buy additional land for a condominium development of 10 to 15 units.

Campbell, who heads up the $50 million condo/retail "Plaza Centro" project that is part of Downtown Tucson's Rio Nuevo development, said his interest in Mount Lemmon is personal.

He said he visited the mountain often with his family before two summers of fire, and intends to keep one of the condos he builds.

He, too, would like to get going next year. "It depends on where we're at on this thing in February or March of next year." Construction here needs to be roofed and enclosed before snow falls.

Weather hasn't had much impact this winter. The report of nail guns and the beeping of backing trucks echoed continuously this week, even as skiers took advantage of a light frosting of snow up the road at Ski Valley.

"This weather is good for us as builders, but it's bad for the community. We need all the moisture we can get," said Greg Ferguson, owner of Sky Island Construction, a small outfit that has built four homes in Summerhaven since the fire.

There hasn't been much of a winter lull, said Ferguson, except on some particularly difficult building sites. Earlier this month, his job site down the mountain a few miles on Fern Ridge was blocked by snow, by seven pines that had blown over and by the electrical wires they toppled.

But nobody here complains about snow, only the lack of it this winter. Every bit of moisture is welcomed atop this tinderbox of a forested mountain, where fire burned 30,563 acres in 2002 and 84,750 acres and most of the mountain's homes and cabins in 2003.

The fear of future fires and the devastation caused by previous ones hasn't deterred rebuilding of homes on the mountain.

Dennis and Maggie Cozzetti are still the king and queen of mountain reconstruction. Cozzetti Construction has built 20 homes since the fire and another eight are under way.

Pima County issued 80 single-family permits in the years following the fire, and homes are sprouting on slopes totally denuded by the Aspen Fire.

Some businesses also came back quickly.

The Mount Lemmon General Store & Gift Shop was rebuilt the first year, and owner Phil Mack said this week that he wishes others would speed up their plans. "I'm too busy," he said. "I would like some competition."

Mack and Dennis Cozzetti also bemoaned the lack of a gathering spot in the village — a function served for years by the Alpine Inn. Cozzetti said he and Mack even toyed with the idea of opening a bar and grill so they'd have a spot for dinner or a beer after work. The main sticking point was that neither wanted to run it.

Mack said he's too busy already. On a recent weekday, he had to close his doors for half an hour midday, just so he could restock his coffee, tea, deli foods and homemade fudge.

Business has also been brisk at the Cookie Cabin, which opened last year on the site of Vic Zimmerman's burned-out Cabins and Cookies. Zimmerman added pizza to his limited menu of drinks and sweets. Pizza revenue has made up the loss of his cabin rentals, he said. "And pizza doesn't check in at 3 a.m. or play the guitar too loud."

Those businesses, joined by Debbie Fagan's Living Rainbow Gift Shop, aren't what you see when you drop into the canyon formed by Sabino Creek at the end of the winding Catalina Highway.

The village center is still a wide spot in the road beneath a slope filled with burned trees and a handful of rebuilt homes. The Mount Lemmon Cafe and Bob and Fran Zimmerman's Mount Lemmon Realty office were the only buildings spared by the Aspen Fire on the north end where the Alpine Lodge, restaurant and bar once stood.

The community building, which will include an interpretive center, a meeting room and restrooms for the 1.5 million people who visit the mountain each year, will start filling in the gap and give folks a sense of what the village will eventually look like.

The lodge, restaurant, bar and condos that Bob Zimmerman plans to build south of the county building share the same architect and design.

"In a lot of ways, this is really going to be the symbol of rebirth of Summerhaven," said Todd Roberts, lead architect on the project for Swaim Associates, which drew up plans for the village center and the first buildings.

The community center will inform visitors about the mountain and its attractions and provide a place for the returning residents to gather.

"Finally," said Phil Swaim, "the community will have a place to meet without pulling the firetrucks out of the bay."

In addition to creating a satellite office for county services, such as the building inspectors trying to keep pace with the builders here, the community center will have room for interpretive exhibits.

The story of the mountain will also be related in the artwork commissioned for the project — historic photographs on ceramic tile and impressions of the mountain's plants and animals on the cement surfaces.

Bob Zimmerman, whose father, Tony, opened the mountain's first lodge, said he's "enthused" about the county's progress but knows it won't stop his mountain neighbors from griping about his lack of progress.

"They beat me up on that every day and want to know when I'm going to get my act together," he said.

"Next year" is his answer for now. "The chances of building this summer are very slim."