## Facts

- Center Bay Gardens, L.L.C. and related entities owned three apartment complexes on East Lemon Street in Tempe, Arizona, directly across the street from a mobile home park targeted for redevelopment.
- The property owner/developer sought city approvals for a higher-density, mixed-use project with multi-story residential units above structured parking and street-level retail.
- The project required zoning variances affecting setbacks, landscaping, height, and density, and the Tempe City Council approved the variances.
- Center Bay filed a special action in superior court challenging the variance approvals, alleging harms unique to its properties due to immediate proximity, including increased density and mass, reduced setbacks and landscaping, and resulting adverse effects on light, air, views, traffic, noise, and property value.
- The City, City Council, and developer moved to dismiss, arguing Center Bay alleged only generalized aesthetic and economic concerns shared by the public.
- The superior court dismissed for lack of standing, finding Center Bay’s alleged harms were not sufficiently specific.

## Issues

1. Whether immediately adjacent property owners who allege increased density and mass, reduced setbacks and landscaping, and resulting economic and physical impacts have standing to challenge zoning variances approved by a city council.
2. Whether a prior appellate decision in related litigation concerning earlier approvals for the same site constituted law of the case barring standing in this subsequent challenge to later variance approvals.

## Decision

- The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal and remanded.
- The court held Center Bay had standing because it alleged particularized harm distinct from the general public, supported by immediate adjacency and claimed project impacts (density, mass, setbacks, landscaping).
- The court held the law-of-the-case doctrine did not bar the action because the earlier appeal did not decide standing for the later variance approvals and involved different claims.

## Legal Principles

- To obtain special-action review of a zoning decision, a plaintiff must be an “aggrieved” party by alleging an injury in fact—economic or otherwise—that is peculiar to the plaintiff or more substantial than that suffered by the community at large.
- Particularized economic harm can satisfy standing; physical injury or finalized damages need not be proven at the pleading stage.
- Immediate proximity to the challenged development can support an inference that alleged impacts (e.g., light, air, views, noise, traffic, and property value) are distinct in degree and kind from generalized public effects.
- Law of the case applies only when the same issue has been previously decided in the same litigation; it does not preclude standing arguments in a later action challenging different approvals and claims.

## Conclusion

The court held that adjacent apartment owners sufficiently alleged individualized economic and property-related harms from granted variances to establish standing, and it rejected law-of-the-case arguments based on earlier, different litigation, remanding for merits proceedings.


Center Bay Gardens, L.L.C. v. City of Tempe City Council, 153 P.3d 374 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2007)