Phoenix residents fear plans for North Valley auto mall, medical campus

In January, Alice Diskin got a letter from Westcor notifying her that it was revisiting a planned auto mall with a proposal to add a medical campus in the North Valley. She was startled as memories flooded to 2006. That year, Diskin joined her neighbors in challenging Westcor's plans to build an auto mall on 80 acres it owned on the northeastern corner of Interstate 17 and Sonoran Boulevard. The challenge was unsuccessful, but the Phoenix-based developer shelved the project as the economy began to sour. Westcor now is proposing an auto mall on half of the property facing the freeway and partnering with John C. Lincoln Health Network to develop a medical campus, and eventually a hospital, on the east side of the parcel. "I said, 'Oh no, not this again.' I thought this was a bad dream that went away. When I got that letter . . . it came back to haunt me," Diskin said, referring to an invitation to the first public meeting on Feb. 1. Diskin, who has lived in the Tramonto community since 2002, is not ready to join another protest. But she worries about the impact of a medical campus and hospital on the neighborhood. She assumes large power lines would come with the development.

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