After spending a year studying Houghton Road, the Arizona Department of Transportation says the road should become a parkway or freeway by 2030 to handle increasing traffic. The recommendation to transform about 11 miles of Houghton is preliminary, and people will be able to share their opinions at meetings on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1.

Kent Knudson had been fed up with cows wandering onto his property for years. So when he came home one afternoon and found a herd in his back yard, he promptly got his .22-caliber rifle and fired.

A grandiose parking garage, big enough to hold 300 motor homes, is being built in Marana as part of a new business park at the southeast corner of Interstate 10 and West Orange Grove Road.

A new retail and office project is about to break ground on the Northwest Side.  San Jose Plaza will be built on the east side of North Oracle Road, just north of El Conquistador Way.

Developer Bob Sharpe is trying again for Sahuarita town approval to add 274 acres to the Rancho Sahuarita subdivision and to rezone the area, but for only 1,000 new homes, half the original number.

What a difference four years makes.  It was all Downtown, all the time in 1999 as Tucsonans prepared to go to the polls in what was billed as an election upon which the very future of the city hinged.

The University of Arizona would need 2,000 more parking places to accommodate everyone who wants to park on campus this semester.

A council of Pima County governments may decide next month whether to study a new alignment for a proposed link between Interstates 10 and 19 south of Tucson.

An amendment to Pima County's comprehensive land-use plan was approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday to help victims of the Aspen Fire rebuild their homes. The amendment applies to 445 acres that were affected by the fire, including the Willow Canyon, Mount Bigelow, Soldier's Camp and Loma Linda/Summerhaven areas.

Metro Restaurants will open the former Tack Room restaurant as a space for special events later this year, scrapping earlier plans to convert it into an Italian eatery. The Tack Room, the city's first five-star restaurant, was closed in May because of customers' changing tastes and lagging interest in high-end dining in Tucson.

Plans to widen the Catalina Highway have been dropped by Pima County's Transportation Department because of resident opposition and new information that shows the road won't carry as much traffic in the future as previously thought. 

The Retreat at Speedway , a 304-unit apartment complex at 7401 E. Speedway , has a new owner. Management Solutions of Fountain Green, Utah , bought the Houston entity that previously owned the property, Simjah Interests LLC. Art Wadlund of Hendricks & Partners negotiated the sale. 

Developers, public officials and environmentalists disagree on whether removing federal protection of the pygmy owl will lower land and housing prices by opening up Northwest Side land to tract housing. 

The federal government has given Pima County a $353,000 grant to help buy a ranch west of Three Points, but the deal may not go through. The Old Hayhook Ranch is worth acquiring now, despite its distance from Tucson 's developing areas, because of wildlife habitat and archaeological sites on the land.

The Boy Scouts may have won its fight with a developer's family to sell Southeast Side land that the developer donated, but it hasn't been able to sell the property.

Sprawl is here to stay in Southern Arizona , but better planning practices and compromises can help lessen the negative effects of urban fringe development.

A nine-acre parcel on the northeast corner of North First Avenue and East Limberlost Road could become a regional soccer park that includes a neighborhood center. Councilman José Ibarra is proposing that the owners of the land consider trading the $4 million property for a piece of city-owned property.

Recent land and property sales.

A Minnesota developer plans to build a series of "villages" - featuring shops, fitness centers, offices and housing - on 368 acres southeast of Tucson .

As funding is chopped, the City Council tweaks its neighborhood and downtown reinvestment plan. 

Here are some interest rate chart --- may be the last we see of that great decline stimulating the real estate segment of the economy for awhile!

The Arizona Department of Commerce is preparing a study that will provide development guidelines for areas around Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Arizona is giving Pima County a chance to preserve more than 4,500 acres of state-owned saguaro and prickly pear desert near Tortolita Mountain Park .

University of Arizona South officials hope to break ground for an observatory before the second annual Dine Under the Stars fund-raiser on Sept. 20.

Ten bidders vied for ownership, but it was a Florida investor who came out the winner in the competition to add the 330-unit Sundown Village apartment complex to its real estate portfolio.

A public database of nearly 5,000 city-owned properties is riddled with mistakes and missing or misleading information, making it all but impossible for anyone outside the government to identify excess land that could be put back on the tax rolls.

A high vacancy rate continues in industrial space near Tucson International Airport , Christopher Keeley, an industrial specialist with Tucson Realty and Trust Co., said as part of his remarks during a commercial real estate mid-year report last week.

Several retail spots, many of them older and in the inner city, are getting versed in the three R's of staying competitive - redevelop, re-tenant or raze. At least 10 percent of the area's roughly 200 shopping centers and big-box stores have major vacancies, accounting for about 1 million square feet of empty shopping space.

Sundt Construction is marketing a new material that helps strengthen older buildings such as hospitals, schools and military bases. The fabric, reinforced with epoxy compounds, is applied to concrete columns and buildings' other structural supports.

Several area shopping centers have vacant space.

A 120-year-old building that signaled a new era of Tucson architecture has been renovated and is looking for an occupant. The fired-brick building - one of the first of its kind in Tucson - was built in 1883 by a leading San Francisco architect, to house a fledgling newspaper called the Arizona Weekly Star. 

Arizona still has a long way to go for biotech companies, but the state's showing at the premier industry convention last month helped put the state on the bio map.

Home improvement giant Lowe's will replace the Super Kmarts that closed recently on Tucson's Southwest Side and in Marana. Both stores - at 1800 W. Valencia Road and 4075 W. Ina Road - will open in early 2004.

A judge is expected to decide by the end of the month whether Oro Valley legally annexed a nearly square-mile area in May. Pima County Superior Court Judge Carmine Cornelio said Friday that he would try to issue his opinion by Tuesday.

Several residents in an old Casas Adobes neighborhood just east of North La Cañada Drive want their neighbor to remove a 2,000-square-foot garage they say is an eyesore, an inappropriate spot for a business and a flood hazard.

More than $42 million is being poured into about seven miles of Oro Valley roads to alleviate traffic congestion and improve safety.

The Dodge Flower Neighborhood in Midtown is considering a name change. The neighborhood is surrounded by neighborhoods with similar names, such as the Oak Flower and North Dodge neighborhoods.

A pledge of 872 new jobs didn't satisfy many citizens at a public hearing Wednesday, when a proposed 3,200-bed prison on the Northwest Side near the Pinal County line was called unwanted, unaffordable and unjust.

In a Downtown with visions of grandeur, the old Greyhound Bus terminal is like a poor relation that just won't go away.

Marana's arts groups are pondering their biggest question yet: What art should grace the Marana Town Hall?

Tygo.com, a real estate oriented search engine, opens its virtual doors today allowing anyone to find home and business resources with its fast and quick search technology services.

What will happen if Tucson has to decide whether to keep growing or keep its military base? Local political leaders are trying to find ways to keep both.

It's been a good time to be a real estate owner in my community. During the past few months several would-be purchasers have approached with offers to buy property we own, even though the properties in question were not listed for sale.

As T ucson 's East Side continues to lure home buyers, the area is also maturing as a destination for retailers.

Two years ago, when Justin and Jane Wickens of Arlington , Va. , decided their money was better off in real estate, they pulled out of the stock market and bought a house on Delaware 's Lewes Beach for about $500,000.

Grubb & Ellis Southwest, the Tucson affiliate of the national real estate brokerage, is no longer locally owned.

Builders and buyers of Downtown housing are proving to be the pioneers of Rio Nuevo, the part-public, part-private effort to redevelop the heart of Tucson .

Telemarketing is a time-honored, legitimate and successful way for many businesses to obtain new customers.