Tucson Citizen.com
Wry Heat - by Jonathan DuHamel

Questions on assisting Raytheon

by on Dec. 10, 2010, under Politics

The Arizona Daily Star story today outlines city/county proposals to allow for expansion of Raytheon, a major employer in the area.

The government proposal involves realigning roads (see map below):

Divert South Alvernon Way to the southeast so it will no longer cut across the future location of a third runway for Tucson International that the airport could build 20 to 40 years from now. Alvernon Way would travel to the southeast until it connected to the alignment of South Craycroft Road – where Craycroft would be if it extended that far south. The current alignment of South Alvernon would be closed as would portions of South Swan Road along with Hughes Access. Old Vail would be improved and expanded. Cost: $31 million.

My question is why bother realigning Alvernon? Why not simply abandon it south of Los Reales Road and gain access to the property from the Nogales Highway? Wouldn’t that save money?

I invite the city/county to provide an explanation of why that alternative is not being considered.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 10th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Politics. Tags for this post: , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Victor Dupa

    Possibly because that access to the north will be necessary when development of the Southlands gets going.

  • Jay Bee

    Despite the name, Hughes Access Road is not solely for Raytheon employees – many take Alvernon to Hughes Access as a faster and easier route to get south on Nogales Hwy.  Beats taking Valencia across with the lights and traffic.
    Also they probably don’t want to strand the gravel pits and other commercial operations at the corner of Alvernon and Hughes Access.

  • a citizen

    pretty simple… just leave it for the 20 or 40 years to see if that potential 3rd runway will ever become an issue. Who knows? In 20 years we could have aircraft that do not require runways at all. Waste of money for a “possible” expansion.

  • yayabrotherhood

    “so it will no longer cut across the future location of a third runway for Tucson International that the airport could build 20 to 40 years from now.”
     
    Strange your title mentions Raytheon but your article does not mention how Raytheon is expanding? All I see is how the AIRPORT will be expanding.
     
    As for the buffer zone, Mr Diamond has been trying to extort RTN to buy his land south of the plan by threatening to build neighborhoods south of an area where highly explosive missiles are assembled.  RTN has no plans to expand its plant site south into this buffer zone. In fact the area north of the buffer zone is owned by the USAF not RTN (you should read up on how that came to be under Howard Hughes for another story of Tucson Gov corruption). Want to know why the tax payers are paying to buy the “buffer” zone from Mr. Diamond ask your city council on what backroom deal they have made.
    Another example of our socialist government TAKING money from citizens to give to others. It is wealth redistribution so all you liberals out there should be happy.

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