The Official Address Guide should be looked on as a guide for determining whether a street address is “correct”, with all parts of the address conforming to the standards and limits described herein.

All address information is entered in uppercase into the addressing database.

Valid Street Number Ranges

Street numbers in Pima County are all numeric and can range from one to any five-digit number. Additions to street numbers, such as “1/2 or A” are no longer allowed as part of the street number field.

Valid Street Directions

Street directions are limited to “N” “E” “W” and “S”. The street direction portion of an address is not optional. All streets in Pima County require that the street direction be specified in order to uniquely identify a given address. In some cases, a spelled out direction is also part of the street address, such as E SOUTH WILSHIRE DR.

Valid Street Names

Valid street names are reviewed, approved, and recorded through the platting process of a subdivision or as an easement through the Board of Supervisors.

Numbered streets will be represented by ordinal numbers, with no leading zeros, that have ST, ND, RD, or TH appended (e.g., 1ST, 22ND, 43RD, and 55TH). Numbers are not spelled out as words.

Spanish equivalents to street types (e.g. CALLE, CAMINO, VISTA) are considered part of the street name. This means that all Spanish street names are entered with a prefix.

As per the Pima County Zoning Code 18.83.040.D.7.a&b: Street names shall be limited in length. Public streets: Fourteen letters and spaces; fifteen if the name has an “I” in it. Private streets: Seventeen letters and spaces.

Please refer to 18.83.040.D for additional street name criteria.

Valid Street Types

Development Services chose to standardize its street types using a two-character letter designation. The following two-character letter designations comprise all the Valid Street Types in Pima County.

Examples Showing Valid Address Numbers, Directions, Names and Types:

Spanish Examples

Valid Jurisdiction Identifiers

Valid Methods for Handling Supplementary Addresses and Units

Address designators for apartments, trailer spaces, numbered dwelling units, and other supplementary address components will be placed behind a pound sign (#) in a separate field from the street name, if possible, or appended to the full street address with a separating space.

Examples Showing Valid Addresses with Supplementary Addresses or Units:

Valid Property Addresses

A property address is a unique address assigned to a parcel or building by Pima County Development Services. The address is assigned based upon the official street name and location that is used for vehicular access.

Exceptions

There are some exceptions to these addressing standards that fall within the City of Tucson historic districts, large apartment buildings, and commercial developments. When possible, these problem areas are reviewed for possible correction and address changes are issued under the approval of the owners and governing jurisdiction.

Official Address & Street Name Changes

A request for an official address and street name change requires owner notification and 51% approval by affected owners. The change is then processed through the appropriate jurisdiction and its governing body before becoming official.

New Street Segments and Corrections

New street segments or easements aligning with existing streets shall assume the same name, unless deemed to be an unreasonable alignment (e.g., may cause emergency delays due to natural or manmade barriers). Streets with multiple names, spellings, incorrect directions, or problems may require correction and official change.

Exceptions for Address Conforming to the Official Address Guide When Processed by Commercial Address Formatting Software.

It is expected that if this address guide is followed and a comparison is made between an existing address file that conforms to the Official Address Guide that a high match rate would be obtained by the Commercial Address Software. Users of County address data may need to create suitable look-up tables for street types and perform an initial scrub on the existing address table, prior to address matching. Some parsing or concatenation of data fields may also be needed.

Expectations for Addresses Conforming to the Official Address Guide when Processed with Geocode tables from Pima County’s GIS Database.

It is expected that if the user were to perform address matching against a Geocoded version of the Official Address Guide tables a high address match rate would be achieved. Geocode Address tables and ArcView templates are available though the Pima County’s Central GIS database.

Available Address Tables

Development Services maintains valid address tables in an ASCII text format and makes them available to users of GIS data through Pima County’s Central GIS Database. These tables contain Valid Street Names, Types, Directions, Valid Addresses, Jurisdictions, and Supplemental Units.