I recently installed VS 2017 community and am unable to find any option to create a "blank windows phone app" project. Yes I have Xamarin installed (Along with the emulators). Has it been removed since Windows phone app development is included via UWP (Universal Apps) project option? Thanks
Yes, it is not supported any more. You can find it for example here
The Visual Studio team has determined that this issue is not a bug. Unfortunately, the Cordova tools in VS 2017 does not support Windows 8.1 development.