A road sign in a car commercial broadcasting in Tucson shows driving distances to both Eloy and Los Angeles, an odd pairing that suggests those locations are the closest major cities in either direction.
Seems far-fetched, no doubt.
But with the way Eloy has been grabbing land lately, someday that TV commercial sign might actually be true.
At 96 square miles, Eloy is already one of the largest cities in the state in terms of its overall area. Right now, the dusty interstate town 50 miles northwest of Tucson is working on eight separate annexation requests that would add another 30.8 square miles to its boundaries.
And with a planning area of 545 square miles, the city of 14,000 people could someday be bigger than Phoenix, the country's 10th-largest city in terms of land mass at 515 square miles.
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"We could be close," notes Joe Blanton, Eloy's planning and economic development director and its interim city manager. "But that's a lot of land. It could take 50 years."
Not at the pace Eloy has been going since 2006. That year the city approved eight annexations totaling 3,526 acres, or about 5.5 square miles.
In 2007, the city annexed eight more parcels of land making up 3,989 acres, the equivalent of about 6.25 square miles.
The eight annexations in the works for this year, including four introduced April 28 at a public hearing, are for a collective 19,633 acres that would bump Eloy's area to 126.8 square miles.
That would make it larger than Marana (120 square miles) and put it within striking distance of surpassing Phoenix-area suburbs Mesa (133), Peoria (138) and Buckeye (145) in overall land size.
Eloy covered 71.7 square miles in 2000, according to the U.S. census but since then has been pulling in parcel after parcel in an attempt to have more control over what goes on around it.
"If we don't grab it, Casa Grande will," Eloy Mayor Byron Jackson said. "Or Coolidge or Marana will. It's all being done from a planning standpoint. There's no doubt about it, Eloy could be a nice little mecca between Phoenix and Tucson."
Jackson, Eloy's mayor since 2004 and part of the City Council since 1996, said Eloy is taking in all this land now so it can have more of a say regarding what gets built there.
Both he and Blanton see the recent slowdown in the housing market as a blessing for the city, which can now take its time working with developers to better plan for growth.
"Two, three years ago when the housing boom was going, these developers were scrambling to get in and get their land uses mapped out," Jackson said.
"With everything kind of slowing down, a lot of them have backed off, and now they're going back to the drawing board."
Developers are likely looking to take advantage of the slowdown to have their new projects fully planned for when the market rebounds, said Marana planning director Kevin Kish.
And with Pinal County encouraging new development to occur within cities and towns — not in unincorporated areas — it makes sense for developers to be rushing to get annexed by Eloy.
"They want to get in now to start the process, so they're ready for the next wave," Kish said.
Most of the new land Eloy has attained or is being asked to pick up is several years from being bladed and upgraded, Blanton said, although at least one project planned for a pending annexation appears ready to go as soon as possible.
Colorado Springs-based The Schuck Corp. is hoping to build a rail-served industrial yard called TransPort Arizona on 1,678 acres northeast of the city's current boundaries. The land is just east of Arizona 87 and a spur of the Union Pacific Railroad.
"We're actually hoping to start construction in 2009," said Dennis Minchow, vice president of development for Schuck.
"We'd like to be able to serve our first user in late 2009 or early 2010. There is an overall need in the Tucson and Phoenix area for a rail-served property."
Schuck's project is not currently adjacent to Eloy's boundaries, so it cannot be annexed until the annexation of the 4,708-acre Orchards at Picacho mixed-use project to its south is approved. That's because cities and towns cannot annex land that doesn't touch their borders.
Of the eight pending annexations, Blanton said the one most likely to get finalized first is EJR Ranch, a 3,640-acre project on the north side of Eloy that would add more neighborhoods to the Robson Ranch age-restricted community just to its south.
Difficulties in the county
Developers and landowners are showing more interest in being part of municipalities than remaining in the county, a result Blanton said of Pinal County's making it known it would prefer not to be in the development business.
"Developing in the county has become more difficult," he said. "I think there's a push by county staff to kind of push these large developments into cities."
Because of that, Eloy recently expanded its municipal planning area from 325 to 545 square miles, stretching south all the way to the Pima-Pinal County border.
Though it's not certain everything within the planning area will one day become part of Eloy, Blanton said he hopes the city can have some input on what ends up being developed there.
"I guess that's why we drew the boundary as large as we did," Blanton said.
"We're trying to guide, as much as we can, growth between the projects. Otherwise we wouldn't have functioning transportation systems."
How various areas compare
Area name Acres Square miles
Sawtooth-Sunland Ranch* 7,416 11.59
Orchards at Picacho 4,708 7.36
EJR Ranch 3,640.35 5.69
TransPort Arizona 1,678.43 2.62
Arboreta Communities-Pretzer & Sunshine 1,258 1.97
Arboreta Communities-Shay & Sunshine 654 1.02
Arooni 204.76 0.32
Broadland Park II 74 0.12
Total 19,633.54 30.68
* Project expected to be withdrawn and resubmitted to include up to 1,500 fewer acres. Source: city of Eloy planning department
By the numbers
• Current size, in square miles, of Eloy: 96
• Size of Marana, in square miles: 120
• Size of Eloy, in square miles, if eight annexations are approved: 126.8
• Size of Tucson, in square miles: 195
• Size of Phoenix, in square miles: 515
• Size of Eloy's planning area, in square miles: 545
DID YOU KNOW
The origin of the name Eloy is unknown, but it does show up as a section of land owned by the railroad as early as 1921. Around that time, three men bought half the section, drilled a well and planned a development to be called Cotton City. When they applied for a post office there, the name Cotton City was rejected. Since the railroad would be carrying the mail and they already had the name on their records, the new town was called Eloy.
Source: Arizona Place Names
Coming soon to ... Eloy?
Eloy is processing eight annexation requests that would increase the city's overall land mass from 96 square miles to 126.8 square miles.
