Author: BEX Staff

By AZBEX Staff for Arizona Builder’s Exchange Inspiration at Cottonwood will be a new, two- and three-story garden style apartment community designed to provide workforce housing to fill a growing need for families currently living in, or moving to, the Verde Valley. Developer Inspiration Holding Company, LLC hopes to break ground this summer. According to an announcement from Sefton Engineering Consultants, the project’s civil engineer, the complex will have 192 “affordable apartment homes with amenities normally seen in upscale apartment complexes.” One target demographic is area hospital employees who want “affordable, yet upscale homes near their employment.” The property is…

By Jane Stewart for Arizona Builder’s Exchange A new industrial park is being proposed along Ray Road in Mesa on 20.89 acres of raw land sandwiched between the Loop 202 San Tan Freeway to the north and Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport to the south. Applicant/Architect Eric Zitny with Ware Malcomb, representing owner Marwest Enterprises, LLC, put plans for The Landing at PMG, Phase I before the city’s Design Review Board for a preliminary review at the March 13th meeting. While unable to approve or deny any cases under a preliminary review, the board will offer suggestions for the applicant to…

The Tucson area has been abuzz with speculation about a massive (technically) speculative warehouse/distribution center project being planned for Century Park Research Center/Port of Tucson that would have a footprint of between 800KSF and 1MSF. We’re sorry for being a couple days late to the party, but AZBEX can confirm plans are in the works; Amazon is the intended tenant, and while the footprint will be 857KSF, the overall building area is 2.3MSF, according to a preliminary plan and document set we were provided by a confidential source affiliated with the project. Known as “Project Wildcat,” the documentation includes a…

Sales Transactions 1. Continental Realty Advisors partnered with GTIS Partners to acquire the 240-unit San Palmas at Mission Park apartment complex in Chandler for $43.2M. The seller, Spring Brook Development, bought the garden-style community in February 2013 for $33.6M, according to CoStar’s analytics. The partnership plans to renovate the complex and upgrade the amenities. 2. ABI Multifamily announced the $19.5M sale of the Rio Santa Fe Apartments in Yuma. Rio Santa Fe Apartments is a 312-unit garden-style apartment community. The buyer is a private multifamily investor based in Arizona. The seller, a partnership formed by Paul Ash Management Company, is a private…

By Roland Murphy for Arizona Builder’s Exchange W.M. Grace Companies and PB Bell have proposed a Planned Area Development to try to breathe new life into a long-dead site at the NWC of Southern Avenue and Alma School Road in Mesa. The 15-net-acre Fiesta Village site was originally developed as a shopping center in 1979, but shifting demographics and retail trends slowly forced merchants out, and the property has sat vacant for years. Nearly 10 years ago there were tentative plans to develop a Lowe’s home improvement store on the property. Those plans fell through, and little, if anything, has…

Awards & Accolades 1. AZRE magazine held its annual Real Estate & Development Awards March 8. The RED Awards highlight impressive projects completed in the last year, as well as the companies and people that make each project possible. 2. AZRE has published the list of 10 most expensive building permits in Phoenix, as compiled by the research team at BuildZoom. 3. Iconic Design Studio and AWE Corporate Interiors are combining their talents to represent the design and furniture industries at the 2018 Western Regional Dental Experience in Glendale. The two will collaborate on “Iconic & AWE: One & Done Dental…

By Roland Murphy for Arizona Builder’s Exchange Arizona’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate nudged upward in January to 4.8 percent, up from 4.7 percent in December, according to the latest report published by the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity. The national rate remained steady at 4.1 percent. Twelve months ago, the state had a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.2 percent, and the national was at 4.8. It should be noted that every year before the January numbers are published, the Current Employment Statistics program revises prior estimates by incorporating material from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages to achieve a…

By Tasha Anderson for Arizona Builder’s Exchange Around 100 people gathered in the ballroom at the DoubleTree by Hilton on Friday, March 9 for the AZBEX inaugural Leading Market Series event, eager to learn what’s going on in the higher education market. The Leading Market Series is a new monthly event that focuses on a specific market sector and brings in top owners for a panel discussion on what they have in the works. “So each month, we want to hear from owners – market sector by market sector – kind of loosely alternating public and private, but we really…

By Jane Stewart and Roland Murphy for Arizona Builder’s Exchange Once Phoenix’s most notorious red-light district, a section of Van Buren Street now has the green light for a supportive housing development. Cardinal Capital Management | AHI has submitted a rezoning request, via Architectural Resources Team, for 2.21 acres located at the SWC of 29th Street and Van Buren Street. This vacant parcel is currently zoned as C-3 (General Commercial) and R-5 (Multifamily Residence District). The request is to rezone to “WU Code (Walkable Urban Core) T5:3 GWY (Transect 5:3 Gateway Character Area) to allow multi-family housing.” The project, El…

Sales Transactions 1. DiamondRock Hospitality Company announced that it has acquired the Kimpton Hotel Palomar, a lifestyle boutique hotel in downtown Phoenix. The purchase price is $80M, or $331K/key. 2. JLL’s Capital Markets team announced the company completed the sale of the Living Spaces Showroom and Distribution Center in Phoenix. JLL represented Living Spaces, which sold the 437KSF, Class A industrial asset to Cohen Asset Management. Mark Detmer, Bo Mills and Ryan Sitov led the JLL team on the sale. They worked with JLL Retail’s Scott Kaplan and Erik Westedt. JLL declined to provide a sales price, but unconfirmed media reports cited a…