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About the Community:
The Surprise Recreation Campus, home of big-league baseball, a dynamic recreation program and special events roster, is at the center of the activity. Buoyed by a regional library, aquatic center, recreation center, community park featuring a five-acre fishing lake, giant playground and doggie park – and soon – a 25-court championship tennis complex with center court seating for 5,000.
City-sponsored events such as Surprise Party, Fourth of July, Movies in the Stadium, Performances in the Park foster fun and family, while clubs and churches provide a place to belong.
Renowned retirement communities and award-winning master-planned family neighborhoods are filled with parks, walking paths and plenty of front-porch attitudes. Commerce. New stores and restaurants are opening almost daily and more than a million-square-feet of retail and office space is master-planned. An upscale regional mall, auto mall and two power centers are scheduled to break ground in 2007.
With projections that Surprise’s population could hit 364,000 by 2020, city leaders are taking a proactive approach to planning. Approved by voters in 2001, the city’s updated general plan encompasses a 310 square-mile planning area and serves as a roadmap to the future.
Growth in Surprise, AZ:
Between 1995 to today, the population has multiplied exponentially - from 10,187 to an estimated 96,000 by the end of 2005. There were more than 7,000 new home starts in 2004. That translates to a new home completed almost every hour, on average, and 50 new residents a day.
Even the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers decided to take up residence here. The once-sleepy square mile farming community surprised just about everyone last fall when it successfully courted the two teams away from their Florida training homes, and snagged $32 million in funding from the Maricopa County Tourism and Sports Authority.
The $48.2 million Cactus League Spring Training facility and stadium was completed in 2002, along with a regional library, aquatic center, recreation center, and passive park – the first installments on a square-mile-plus downtown development dubbed Surprise Center. A joint venture with Carefree Partners (a division of Valley shopping center developer Westcor) it will feature government offices, shops, upscale restaurants and entertainment venues.
Commercial development is booming, as well. The state’s largest Wal-Mart Supercenter and a sizeable Home Depot opened in 2000 as anchor tenants of Surprise Towne Center, a power retail development. Situated on the northwest corner of major thoroughfares, Grand Avenue and Bell Road, it features more than 40 locally and nationally known stores including PetsMart, Office Max, Famous Footwear, banks, restaurants. Just across the road, Target and Lowe’s Home Improvement Center anchor a sprawling commercial center, Surprise Marketplace, and throughout the 76-square-mile city, churches, gas stations, grocery and drug stores, are cropping up.
The Dysart Unified School District has opened a two kindergarten through eighth grade elementary schools a year for the past three years. A new high school opened in 2003 and another one is expected to open in August of 2006.
Opened in 1996 in Surprise, Rio Salado Community College’s Lifelong Learning Center services about 5,000 students a year with a wide variety of courses including GED preparation, basic to advanced computer programming, special interest, and associate degree programs. Estrella Mountain Community College is now offering courses on the campus of Willow Canyon High School and nearby Del E. Webb Memorial Hospital expanded to include women’s services, labor and delivery, and pediatric neonatal wing.
More growth for Surprise, Arizona is no doubt on the horizon.
623.824.5202
