The Tucson Spectrum, near Irvington Road and I-19, will bring major-brand stores closer to Sahuarita. Officials fear tax "leakage."

Dean Knuth / Arizona Daily Star

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Jared Thompson sometimes pulls a trailer with his truck to work in Tucson so he can pick up building materials on his way back home to Sahuarita.

Thompson — who works at Raytheon Missiles Systems, just south of Tucson International Airport — said he'd like to buy those products in Sahuarita. But there are none of the big-box home-improvement stores that he prefers anywhere between Tucson and Nogales.

"If we had a Lowe's or Home Depot, that would be heaven," he said.

Sahuarita officials think it would be heavenly to have more stores, for the convenience of residents and to boost the town's sales-tax revenue to help pay for parks, police and other important services.

So on some days after work, Thompson swings by the Home Depot at West Point Crossing, also known as Placita del Rio, a commercial complex in Tucson on the southwest corner of the Interstate 19-Irvington Road interchange.

Thompson said he sometimes shops at the Sahuarita Wal-Mart on the Nogales Highway.

"But other than that, I pretty much do my shopping in Tucson," Thompson said. "There's just not a lot of good shopping in Sahuarita now."

That's the kind of story that Kathy Ward, Sahuarita's economic development manager, hears all the time.

And though she wishes Sahuarita residents wouldn't shop out of town so much, Ward realizes the town still lacks many of the businesses that consumers want.

"It would be nice to be farther along, but we're not there yet," she said.

Marketplace is most recent

Sahuarita has made some progress in encouraging commercial development — the Marketplace at Rancho Sahuarita being the most recent example.

The company — which is developing Rancho Sahuarita, the town's biggest development, and the Marketplace at Rancho Sahuarita — is planning to develop a commercial-retail-office complex to be called The Rancho Sahuarita Town Center in an area south of Sahuarita Road between the new municipal complex and Interstate 19.

Company officials are still working on the concept, but they hope to begin work on the complex over the next decade, said Cort Chalfant, a senior vice president with the company.

Ward said the town's ongoing efforts to attract more employers also will help encourage commuters to stop and shop in Sahuarita, not Tucson, on the way home.

"More employers and more people working in the town will definitely help," she said. "But in the short term, we're focused on providing more retail, more products and services, for our residents."

Bringing in businesses also would help the town by boosting sales-tax revenue.

Ward estimates that the town loses about 70 percent of potential revenue it would otherwise collect if it could keep Sahuarita residents from shopping out of town.

Economic-development types such as Ward call that loss of tax revenue "leakage" — and she and other town officials are concerned that an even bigger leak will spring as businesses open up at the Tucson Spectrum. That's the commercial complex now under construction south of Placita del Rio, just west of Interstate 19 and south of the Irvington Road interchange.

Tucson officials expect the 15 new businesses that will occupy the 620,000 square feet of space in the Spectrum will generate up to $2 million annually in additional city sales-tax revenues.

Sahuarita's growth potential

The kinds of businesses that are coming to the Spectrum usually require a larger population than the Sahuarita-Green Valley area.

But corporate officials who make decisions on where to open new stores also need up-to-date information about Sahuarita — especially its recent, rapid growth and potential for continued growth, Ward said.

"In talking with other companies, I'm finding they don't know about the rapid growth here, and the distances, like from here to Tucson," she said.

Ward said she will make that part of her pitch to officials with J.C. Penney, one of the retailers she had on her list of prospects — and still has, despite the company's decision to open a store in the Spectrum complex, more than 20 miles north of town.

"We're not going to assume they're not going to open here," she said. "We'll go into it knowing they may not want to open a store soon in Sahuarita.

"We need to keep having backups, keep up with the program," she said. "This is a strategy that develops over time."

Big change from 2000

An important part of that strategy is simply providing updated information about the number and types of people who live in Sahuarita, Ward said.

Too often, the only number widely available on Sahuarita's population is 3,200 — the tally of residents from the 2000 census.

A mid-decade state census puts the number at 13,000 — closer to the town's current estimate of 22,000.

Detailed information about that growing population is now available in two recent studies commissioned by the town:

● An analysis of the town's work force conducted in 2007 by Ward, the town's Economic Development Commission and Maile Nadelhoffer, a research economist with the UA Eller School of Management's Economic and Business Research Center.

● The Community ID study, released last month by Texas-based Buxton Co, which provides detailed demographic information likely to help attract retailers, Ward said.

Among other things, the Buxton report suggests that Sahuarita's economic epicenter is actually a bit east of town, at the intersection of East Sahuarita Road and South Alvernon Way.

People who live within a 15-minute drive of that point — a distance of about 12 miles — are potential Sahuarita shoppers, according to the report.

That would include Green Valley to the south, Corona de Tucson and parts of Vail to the east, the southern edge of Tucson to the north and the area west of Sahuarita.

"We really target Sahuarita Road — anything east of town," Ward said. "From Corona, it's just one stoplight (at Nogales Highway) and they're here."