Lennar Corp., the developers of a massive master-planned community once thought to be a signal of rapid growth in the northwest Valley, downsized the project's grand opening this month amid continuing struggles in the housing industry.

Lennar began planning its $1 billion, 3,600-acre Asante project in Surprise in 2004, near the peak of Arizona's housing boom.

The community - envisioned to include 14,000 homes, schools, a 1 million-square-foot retail center and a 55-acre park with sports fields and a World War II monument - has long been hailed by city officials as the city's economic epicenter of the future along the Grand Avenue corridor and a crucial element in Surprise's growth.

Lennar marked Asante's grand opening last week with the launch of a 60-acre housing development called the Vistas.

Lennar originally had expected to open three or four housing developments, offering a variety of housing sizes, with inventory on hand for immediate move-in.

Instead, it opened the Vistas with its most popular product line - three- to four-bedroom, single-family homes - and no inventory on hand.

"It's more appropriate to have a (single) community in there at this time and gauge how the market reacts to it," Lennar Regional Vice President Alan Jones said.

To balance the future residential units, Barclay Group planned to build Surprise Spectrum at Asante, a 124-acre power center that would rival Phoenix's Desert Ridge Marketplace in size. Barclay is now re-evaluating its commercial plans for the area, primarily because when the housing market was hot, Surprise increased its commercial building fees.

Now, those increased fees could hurt its projects' profitability because of the recent drop in land values.

Deputy City Manager Sintra Hoffman recently met with Barclay representatives to renegotiate the fees in an effort to keep the projects on track.

Though Asante's recent changes are a reflection of the overall economic downturn, they are not necessarily a bad thing.

"The fact that they opened at all is good," Valley economist Elliott Pollack said. "This is a vote of confidence in Surprise, if you will, by the developers. They think in the long run, this will work out."

Pollack said that the changes made to the Asante plan offer a model of how cities and developers should be reacting to the current real-estate downturn: adjusting for and roughing out the short-term, but continuing to plan for the long-term.

"Our expectation is that the market is going to improve. We feel strongly that Arizona is going to continue to be one of those places that people want to live or will move to," Lennar's Jones said.

Since opening its sales office on July 12, the Vistas has recorded three sales. About six other potential buyers have expressed interest and hundreds continue to tour the four model units that are up, Jones said.

The units range in price from $230,000 for an 1,800-square-foot home to $320,000 for a 3,500-square-foot home.

Information: 800-864-1058 or www.asanteliving.com.