Article about the facility
The Largest RV Compound in the U.S.
Signs of the Past by Ed Allen
The Sun Cities RV Compound provides 107 acres of storage for 5000 RV rigs of all types, plus boats and trailers. A key requirement is that an RV owner live in Sun City, Sun City West, Sun City Grand, Sun City Festival, or Corte Bella.
The club’s history may be found on its website. The original RV Club was chartered by the Sun City Rec centers and DEVCO made land available for storage. The first compound was located at 103rd and Coggins in Phase 1 and over the years expanded south to Alabama Ave. Outgrowing that space, the storage compound was moved to the northeast corner of 103rd and Santa Fe in 1965. When it outgrew that, it was moved to vacant land in Sunland Memorial Park where it was expanded three times before running out of space. With Sun City West underway, it was clear much more land would be needed.
The downsizing of SCW made this land available. SCW was originally planned as a community of 70- 75,000 but the rapid rise in interest rates in 1980-81 caused the Webb Corp. to sell land to reduce the interest they were paying. Phase 2 of SCW, west of Grand Ave. was sold and SCW became a community of 30,000. The wastewater treatment plant at 111th and Beardsley was planned for the larger community and included a narrow stretch of land all the way a mile south of Bell. This would be used for 24 recharge basins, which would allow treated water to seep down to the underlying aquifer. But with a smaller SCW, less land would be needed for recharging – and the southernmost piece of land became the site for the new, much larger RV storage compound.
The Webb Corp. offered 107 acres in the above area with the proviso that the compound be open to Sun City and Sun City West residents. The first trailer moved into the new compound in Dec. 1984. An expansion of 28 acres took place in 1996 when it was agreed to accept Sun City Grand residents as members. Further expansions in 2005 and 2017 filled out the compound’s 5000 spaces shown above.