By Ed Gaines, Gail Christmann, Aaron Gudenkauf and Kiyo Taylor, on behalf of the Sonoita/Elgin Preservation and Planning Committee
Many folks will recall the 2023 announcement of a Cuisine Tourism effort for Sonoita/Elgin. At a January 2024 community meeting at Elgin School over 150 residents showed up.
Over the next six months, a group of 73 residents kept meeting to learn more about the options available to Sonoita/Elgin. We lost some folks along the way, but the remaining participants voted to work with the County and explore some ideas that might give our community a little bit of control over future growth—so we don’t feel like something else is being shoved down our throats.
Our group has continued to meet, learn, and debate about what would best serve the needs of our community while addressing the concerns of our community. The group as a whole was never particularly interested in the tourism focus but a constant reality in our discussions was that development can happen at any point in time. Just over the course of our meetings, the lot across from the Fairgrounds was bought and development started, Tia Nita’s was sold and is under renovation, and the boutique store moved into the Feed Store. And that huge land parcel between 82 and 83 is still up for sale.
We continued wrestling with this idea of how development is currently happening in our community and our community’s inability to weigh in on what the community would like to see in the future. In August 2024 we decided to shift our focus to preservation and planning and began researching all of the prior community planning efforts—there have been quite a few over the years. Some were good as a whole, and some had great parts, but across all of them, there is a consistent theme of folks from Sonoita/Elgin wanting to preserve our community.
After months of deliberation, our group believes there is a way to make a framework that captures what our community wants to preserve and helps guide future growth. When Santa Cruz County District 3 Supervisor John Fanning and County Manager Jesus Valdez attended our February 2025 meeting, we were able to express this to them directly.
Our goal is to ensure that the voices of local citizens remain at the forefront of decision making and that any proposed solutions align with the principles of responsible governance and community-driven development. We will continue to publish updates in the PRT and invite PRT reporters to attend all meetings to do independent reporting as well.
We also strongly encourage all community members to get involved. Whether by attending meetings, offering feedback, or reviewing the proposed plans as they take shape, participation will be key to ensuring that any initiative reflects the true priorities of our area. Whenever we have a larger update for the community, we will schedule and advertise a town hall meeting.
And on that note, we’d like to invite the Sonoita/Elgin community to join us for a Town Hall meeting at the Fairgrounds (Pioneer Hall) on April 29, 2025, at 6:30 PM. We hope you’ll be able to join us!