Sun City, AZ Construction

— Sun City, AZ

Building in Sun City

Sun City is unincorporated Maricopa County rather than a city, so a permit here is a county submittal rather than a municipal one. That is a different process from the cities around it, and it is the first thing we establish on a Sun City project.

The community was built from 1960 onward as age-restricted housing, and the stock is remarkably consistent: compact single-storey homes, slab-on-grade, block construction, low-slope and built-up roofs, and carports as often as garages. Those low-slope roofs are the recurring job — they need a different covering and a different detail from the tile and shingle roofs elsewhere in the valley, and they are unforgiving about ponding.

There is a second permit here that catches people out: because Sun City is not a city, the Sun City Fire District issues its own permits and inspections for fire and life safety alongside the county building permit. The recreation centres and community rules also set expectations on noise, hours and contractor conduct. We work to them, and we leave a tidy site every day, because in a neighbourhood this settled an untidy job is remembered.