The long-running drama between Scottsdale and Axon, the major manufacturer of law enforcement equipment, has taken yet another turn. To recap: For months now, Axon, which was originally founded in a garage in Tucson, has been trying to build a major world headquarters campus in Scottsdale, where the company has been based for many years. But the proposed expansion has faced waves of controversy. Scottsdale residents tried unsuccessfully to get a
referendum on the project put on the ballot for 2026 , and
the state Legislature recently passed a bill allowing them to proceed. Axon has been working with the City Council to reach a compromise on the scope of its plans, but those negotiations broke down on Monday, with
Axon’s president declaring that their talks with the council had dissolved into “toxicity.” Jeremy Duda with Axios has been following all of this, and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
JEREMY DUDA: Well, you had a number of folks on the City Council, I think probably a major, the majority of the city council, who are hoping to reach some sort of accord with Axon where they would lower the number of apartment, of housing units in this headquarters building. They're gonna be building at Hayden and Loop 101. It's supposed to be about 1,900 apartment units and condos. There's also, there would be some other stuff, hotels, hotels, restaurants, etc. Other stuff, the site of the apartments are really what have got a lot of folks bothered out there, and that's what's generated all the opposition we've seen, you know, over the past, you know, seven to eight months or longer than that, but really ramping up since about December.
DINGMAN: And do we know where things stood with the conversation in terms of the number of units at the time the talks broke down, because, as you mentioned, initially the number was 1,900, we've seen it as low as 850. Where had they sort of netted out in these talks? DUDA: From my understanding is that Axon had gone down to around 1,700, but I think, you know, a lot of folks at the City Council, they had wanted, they were hoping to get a lot lower than that, but, you know, they don't have a heck of a lot of leverage to make that happen at this point.
DINGMAN: And just to be clear, why is Axon saying that they need this housing to be built? DUDA: I mean, I, I believe that the point of this is to kind of make the whole project viable. I mean, this is a, this is a headquarters building, this is a very large project that would house, you know, not just the headquarters for this major company but add the other things that that you know, they want to, I think, to make that a more profitable operation.
DINGMAN: I see. So, this breakdown in talks, where Axon has basically stepped away from the negotiations, it seems. What does that mean in a practical sense? Do they just start construction? Are there any remaining obstacles? DUDA: Oh, it means they're, I mean, they say they, what they tell me is they're going to move ahead with the project as planned, as I mentioned, there's not, you know, they didn't have a lot of incentive to negotiate and the Scottsdale City Council didn't have a lot of leverage. The, as you may recall the Legislature and Gov. Katie Hobbs that passed a law recently that basically blocks that for all intents and purposes, blocks a referendum election that's supposed to be on the ballot next November to where people could vote on whether to reverse the zoning change that the city council made last year that would allow this to happen. That is what kind of triggered this latest round of negotiations at, you know, Axon no longer really needs anything from Scottsdale. They don't need any kind of agreements for this building to move forward as they planned it and so. That's, that's kind of where they stand now. They plan to move ahead. Now there could be other obstacles. There's, you know, talk of the city, the city has retained a lawyer, I believe, to potentially sue over this law that would, that blocks the referendum election, so that'll go to court. There's talk of a possible referendum election, referendum campaign to try to put that law on the ballot, which I think is far less likely to happen. It's a very high hurdle in terms of the number of signatures you have to collect in a very short amount of time and plus outside of Scottsdale, maybe even just out of that part of Scottsdale. I'm not sure how many voters actually care about this and how much that would mean to folks outside of that particular area.
DINGMAN: It starts to get confusing somewhat quickly because if I, if I'm tracking this correctly, that would be a referendum on a law about referenda? DUDA: Yes, so the, the law that would really only, really only affects a small handful of cities. It was very narrowly tailored, so it doesn't just only affect Scottsdale, affects a few other cities as well, but for all intents and purposes, it's, you know, it was passed specifically to take in the Scottsdale election and stop that from happening.
DINGMAN: Gotcha. And what do we know from, obviously, you know, we've been talking about what Axon is, is saying about this. What has the city of Scottsdale said about this, this so-called “toxicity”? DUDA: It depends. I'm not, I'm not sure what the, you know, there's different folks here because they've been dealing with, what you have the Scottsdale is, I think it's hard to argue it's not a toxic environment for reasons that have nothing to do with Axon. You've had a lot of discord there since the new City Council and new mayor took over, you have a kind of majority faction of four people on the council that has been at odds with mostly with the, with the Mayor [Lisa] Borowsky, the new mayor, since they all took office, even though they're all Republicans. Josh Isner, the president of Axon, said there, specifically said there were three members of the council who have been very obstructionist, although he made a point of, kind of praising both Mayor Borowsky and one of the council members who's a member of that four-person faction, Adam Kwasman, said the two of them, you know, they've had good negotiations with them had good things to say about them. But the other three people in that majority faction, at least according, from the Axon president's view, have been the problem.
