Oro Valley tourism panel adds sports tourism to top priority, asks council to review resort relationship

The Oro Valley Tourism Advisory Commission amended its leisure-travel plan on March 16 to explicitly add sports tourism to its top-ranked priorities and asked staff to prepare a report for Town Council on relations with local resorts, including El Conquistador and Westwood Resort.

Chair D'Angelo read a staff-recommended motion asking the Town Council to place the resort-relationship matter on a future agenda; the commission moved, seconded and approved the recommendation. During the discussion, several commissioners argued for initial staff-driven analysis rather than immediate open-ended public invitations to resort principals, and staff said the town manager has authority to approve the report and that it will be released simultaneously to council and the commission.

Staff framed the change to the leisure-travel plan as clarifying the implementation path rather than rewriting the commission's priorities. "We're ranking number 1 to include sports tourism," staff said during the motion to amend the rankings, reflecting commissioners' direction to capture both sports and event-driven tourism in the top slots. Commissioners debated the specificity of some high-cost items (for example, building additional soccer fields carries an estimated multi-million dollar price tag) and urged staff to provide clearer phased plans and cost-benefit or payback analyses before the commission makes further programmatic recommendations.

Public commenters and commissioners also urged sensitivity to community uses of park facilities and to preserving historical resources. Resident Janet Sloan asked the commission to ensure any activation of Steampunk Ranch includes the historical society and protects the site's historic character.

Next steps: staff will finalize and release the report on resort relations to Town Council and the Tourism Advisory Commission and will follow up with implementation-level analyses (cost/benefit and phasing) for top-ranked initiatives, including sports tourism and event strategy.