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CITY SNAPSHOT: City of Coolidge
Coolidge is focused on developing a robust business-friendly attitude that has already started to define this historic cotton farming community into an emerging
industrial center. Numerous cotton fields have given way to industrial parks and 1,600 new homes. Available land in Coolidge has grown from 6 square miles in 2001
to 65 square miles today and stands to double to 125 square miles in the future. The long-term goal in the Pinal County Comprehensive Plan calls for Coolidge to
become a central employment site for the entire County.
Coolidge has the only public transit system in the County called the Cotton Express. In addition to its local routes, this year the transit system has reached out
to become a regional system serving Florence and Casa Grande. Coolidge is also home to Pinal County's only public national monument with the Casa Grande National
Monument which attracts eighty-thousand visitors each year.
Coolidge is centrally located and within an hour of Phoenix and Tucson and minutes from an assorted big-box shopping center in Casa Grande. Coolidge prides itself
on a low crime rate and a hometown community spirit. Today it has 13,000 residents, an underused Airport, a five-hundred acre industrial park still in its
earliest stages. Plans for a north/south freeway running from Apache Junction to Picacho alongside Coolidge's east edge will significantly increase the future
population of the City.
The Coolidge City Airport has two of its original runways, which are ideal for landing C-130 transport planes. International Air Response owns a fleet of C-130's
used by the U.S. Department of Defense. Air drops are their primary activity, as well as oil disbursement in the BP oil rig catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
There is still plenty of room for another Airport client, Complete Parachute Solutions (CPS) Tactical Training Facility, to carry off 12,000 parachute jumps a
year for U.S. and allied military. CPS has used Coolidge Airport as a military free-fill training site for six years. Potential Airport development currently
includes companies looking at locating unmanned aerial aircraft experimental testing at the Airport.
In the meantime, Coolidge is focused on building its industrial base, including the possibility of a 5,000 bed prison facility. The City increased its designated
employment generation land area from six percent to twenty-two percent of its 125-square-mile planning area. Western Emulsions and TransCanada recently completed
their multi-million dollar construction projects and are now operational. The City prides itself with the hard-earned reputation as a developer-friendly, one stop
center for planning and permitting projects.
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League of Arizona Cities and Towns
1820 W. Washington St.
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Phone: 602-258-5786
Fax: 602-253-3874
http://www.azleague.org
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