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Pulte Homes has pulled out of a proposed Anthem housing development in Benson, citing the weak national housing market.

Pulte originally proposed a master-planned community on about 6,000 acres at Whetstone Ranch — a community that could have added more than 30,000 residents to Benson, which now has a population of about 5,000.

But company officials told a Benson City Council meeting Monday night that the upfront investment for developing a community of that scale is too great in today's conditions.

"Right now is not the time for us to be making that type of investment," Pulte spokeswoman Jacque Petroulakis said Tuesday. "We need to be focused on our current offerings."

By dropping the plans for Anthem at Whetstone Ranch, Pulte Homes walked away from a "substantial" investment in planning the community and purchasing an option to buy the land, said Tucson lawyer Pat Lopez, president of Whetstone Development Co.

He would not specify how much, and Shawn Chlarson, president of Pulte's Tucson division, did not return a Tuesday night call seeking comment.

Deadlines to close on the deal had been extended a few times before Pulte decided to pull out, Lopez said.

The decision disappointed some Benson city officials.

"Pulte's a great partner, and there's a little bit of anguish that they're no longer actively pursuing it," City Manager Martin Roush said.

"It's kind of a shame," Mayor George Scott said. "I thought it would be a great asset to northern Cochise County and also to the city of Benson."

The first Anthem master-planned community is at New River, north of Phoenix, which gave its name to other developments. Pulte has sold about 80 percent of the homes in the popular, 10,500-home project.

Pulte is in the early stages of developing a 9,100-home Anthem project in the Florence area and is buying land for a third Anthem in the Buckeye area west of Phoenix, Petroulakis said.

Pulte hopes to return to the Benson area, Petroulakis said. Still, the Anthem project there appears dead: It was to be part of the 14,000-acre Whetstone Ranch development — and now the owners are talking with three other possible buyers.

Lopez would not name the home builders but called them "names you would recognize."

Of the reduced, 4,500 acres that Pulte was negotiating to buy at the end, a "significant portion will probably end up being a master-planned community," Lopez said.

A preliminary master plan submitted in 2005 to the city of Benson said Anthem at Whetstone Ranch was to have three golf courses, 19 miles of trails, a man-made pond, a water park, pocket parks, four new schools and areas for family residences and age-restricted areas. It also called for a community center and commercial development close to Arizona 90.

Projected prices ranged from about $120,000 up to $500,000, according to minutes from a Benson public meeting.

R.L. Brown, a longtime Phoenix housing-market analyst, said he is not surprised at Pulte's decision, because market conditions have worsened since this and other projects were planned.

Every builder is reviewing its projects, and many have been put on hold, including the Copper Mountain and Merrill Ranch projects in Casa Grande and Florence, respectively, Brown said. The developer of both of them, Harrison Merrill, was in the planning stages for both but has put the projects on hold until the market improves, Brown said.

He said he does not expect the housing market to improve enough to justify projects of the Anthem scale in the Benson area until 2009 or 2010, but that he "absolutely" believes they will be feasible in the future.

Lopez said he is optimistic about the outlook for the Whetstone Ranch property despite Pulte's pullout.

"Things like this happen — it's the nature of development," Lopez said. "It's a 20- or 30-year process. We will go through ups and downs in the process."

Barbara Buntin, an activist who lives in rural eastern Pima County, said she hopes the Anthem pullback means Benson's growth will slow a bit, giving planners and other officials a chance to develop some good, creative ideas for new subdivisions "so it doesn't end up looking like a lot of that stuff in Tucson."

"I'd like to see them be a lot more creative in their planning," said Buntin, who lives in the J-Six/Mescal area near the Pima-Cochise County line. "There's been too much of a rush, rush, rush."