On Paper, It’s a Zoning Fight. In Practice, It’s Leverage.

For years, the Phoenix metro has been shorthand for a builder-friendly market: fast permits, pro-growth councils, and room to move. That reputation is now colliding with a string of high-profile fights. An advocacy group called Worker Power, tied to a hospitality-workers union, has helped force major Valley projects onto the ballot, from a Glendale resort to a Scottsdale corporate headquarters to a Tempe sports-anchored entertainment district. In several of these cases, the city council had already said yes, sometimes unanimously, after a full public process. The approval didn’t end the fight. It started the next one.

It would be easy to file this under “community opposition is getting louder.” That read is true, but it misses what actually makes these fights different and why they're a preview rather than a one-off.

The objections on the record are rarely the grievance driving the fight.

In these Arizona cases, the stated concerns have been a rezoned parcel once used for park space, water discharge from a man-made beach, a tax-incentive amendment, and light and noise. Real issues, all litigable on their merits. But the developers and city officials on the receiving end have publicly described the group’s actual interest as something else entirely. Leverage to organize the project’s future workforce. The zoning fight, in their telling, isn’t about zoning. It’s the venue. The land-use process is simply the most powerful pressure point available, so that’s where an unrelated demand gets applied.

This is the part developers consistently get wrong. When you assume your opponent cares about the thing they’re objecting to, you respond by fixing it. You redesign the discharge plan. You adjust the lighting. You commission the traffic study. Months disappear. The opposition doesn’t soften because you spent that time solving a problem that was never the obstacle. You can’t satisfy a proxy by perfecting the thing it’s standing in for. The real ask is at a different table, and until you find that table, every concession you make is wasted motion.

The second shift is procedural, and it’s the one that should reset how every sponsor scopes a project timeline.

A favorable vote at the dais used to signal that the political risk was behind you. In an increasing number of jurisdictions, it now means you’ve cleared phase one. Direct-democracy tools such as referenda and initiatives allow an organized group to take a council’s decision and put it back before voters, even after unanimous approval and a clean public record. 

In Scottsdale, opponents gathered tens of thousands of signatures to send a headquarters rezoning to a referendum. In Glendale, a petition drive collected enough signatures that the city ultimately repealed its own incentive action rather than fight an election. In Tempe, a project that had cleared its approvals was sent to the ballot and lost.

Notice what that does to your risk model. The hearing is no longer the moment of maximum exposure. It’s the opening move. Your real test may come weeks or months later, in a low-turnout special election, when your opponent has a motivated base, and you have only a press release. If you treated the council vote as the win and stood down your coalition, you would walk into that election with nothing built.

And here’s the uncomfortable irony for builder-friendly markets: the states with the strongest pro-business reputations in the West – Arizona, California, and Colorado – also tend to have the most robust ballot-initiative and referendum traditions in the country. The same civic machinery that makes a place feel open and participatory also hands organized opponents a second bite at every approval. “Business-friendly” and “procedurally exposed” are not opposites. In these markets, they’re the same trait viewed from two angles.

It’s worth saying plainly what this is and isn’t. This isn’t a story about one union, one party, or one coast. State legislatures and governors from both parties have intervened, sometimes to override these referendums, sometimes to defend them. That tells you the tactic doesn’t belong to a political side. It belongs to whoever learns it first. Treating it as a culture-war grievance is itself a strategic error: it hands your opponent the mobilization narrative they want and shrinks your own coalition to those who already agree with you. The disciplined response is clinical, not tribal.

If your project has a workforce footprint, a public incentive, or any concentrated stakeholder who wants something from you, assume the land-use process can be turned into leverage against you. Then prepare accordingly.

DIAGNOSE THE REAL ASK BEFORE THE FIRST HEARING. This is what opposition research is for. Map who benefits from the delay and who has an unrelated demand, such as a labor organization, a competitor, an adjacent owner, or a group seeking a policy concession. Identify the table where the actual fight lives. You cannot negotiate a settlement you haven’t located.

DON’T LITIGATE THE PROXY. When an objection is a stand-in, resolving it on the merits buys you nothing and costs you months. Address the genuine community concerns because it’s right and it builds your record, but don’t mistake that work for resolving the opposition.

SCOPE ENTITLEMENT AS A TWO-PHASE CAMPAIGN. Plan for a hearing phase and a possible ballot phase from day one. Know your jurisdiction’s referendum window, signature thresholds, and which actions (rezonings, development-agreement amendments, incentive votes) are most exposed. Sequence your approvals to minimize the surface area an opponent can put on a ballot.

BUILD A BASE YOU CAN ACTUALLY ACTIVATE. Genuine, visible community support, residents who will sign, testify, and turn out, is your only real defense in a referendum. That support has to exist before a petition drops, not be assembled in a panic after. Earned validators, a real coalition, and a turnout operation are entitlement infrastructure now, not campaign luxuries.

RETIRE THE WORD “SAFE.” A friendly council is necessary and no longer sufficient. The most pro-growth markets in the country are precisely where this playbook is being refined, because that’s where the procedural tools are richest. Plan as if your easiest market is your most exposed one.

The fight that decides your project increasingly isn’t the one on the agenda. It’s the one beneath it, and it may not be resolved until voters weigh in, long after the council says yes. Developers who keep treating entitlement as a permitting exercise will keep getting surprised. Those who treat it as a political campaign, with a real coalition and a plan for the ballot, are the ones still standing when the special election is over.

That’s the work we do. If your next project is in a market where approval might be the opening move rather than the closing one, it’s worth a conversation before the first hearing, not after the petition lands.