Author: BEX Staff

By Roland Murphy for AZBEX BEXclusive There’s nothing fast, cheap or easy about bringing a development project from concept to completion. From choosing a site, to designing to project, assembling a development team, procuring approvals and permits, assembling financing, et cetera, there are countless challenges and speed bumps to delay progress and add to costs before the build team turns the first shovel of dirt. It’s understandable and accepted that owners, particularly small owners who aren’t major developers and don’t build strings of projects across the country, may try to save money and keep upfront costs to a minimum by…

By BEX Staff for AZBEX Documents filed recently with the City of Mesa show heavy industrial equipment manufacturer Komatsu has plans to develop an almost 240KSF facility at Sunbelt Investment Holdings Inc.’s 230-acre Mesa Ellsworth business park near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. Recordings of a recent meeting to discuss the proposal show Komatsu will purchase the 25-acre development site from SIHI. Local news reports say the Komatsu facility would be used for sales and service functions, with a key use being a main weld and machine shop area. Also included will be 50KSF of warehouse space, 50KSF of equipment shop space…

By Salt River Project The Department of the Interior has announced the approval of $8.5M for the Verde Reservoirs Sediment Mitigation Project Feasibility Study, which could restore storage loss due to sedimentation in reservoirs that supply water for the Phoenix metropolitan area. Salt River Project has partnered with the Bureau of Reclamation and 22 municipal, tribal and agricultural water users on a study for restoring a loss of capacity in Bartlett and Horseshoe reservoirs, which are located on the Verde River in the Tonto National Forest and operated by SRP. The Verde River watershed covers nearly 7,000 square miles across…

Awards & Accolades 1. Arizona Commerce Authority won an Economic Development Organization Award for its Future48 Workforce Accelerator training center. The award is to recognize EDO efforts in delivering capital investment, job creation, quality of life and other factors. 2. Dan Maher with GLHN Architects & Engineers, Inc. completed the Design-Build Institute of America’s certifications and has become a nationally certified Design-Build Professional. 3. ConnectCRE held the 2024 Next Generation Awards, presenting awards to 100+ winners across several regions. The Phoenix & Southwest winners include: Davis Bocks – CapMatrix, Chris Rogers – DAUM Commercial, Zack House – Marcus & Millichap,…

Sales Transactions 1. CBRE Hotels Institutional advised Anish Hotels Group in the $43.3M sale of the 148-room Home2 Suites by Hilton Phoenix Downtown. Hotel real estate investment trust Chatham Lodging Trust acquired the property. CBRE’s Carter Gradwell, Jennifer Bergamo and Rick Rush advised the seller. Island Hospitality Management will manage the hotel. 2. CapRock Partners announced the nearly $32M sale of Longbow Industrial Park, a 244KSF industrial complex in Mesa. Stein Koss, Tom Louer, Marc Pierce and Fenton Kelly of Lee & Associates represented CapRock Partners. 3. Newmark arranged the $24.5M sale of 3200 Central, a 25-story, 350KSF office tower…

By Design-Build Institute of America The Design-Build Institute of America has announced the release of its updated Transportation and Aviation Design-Build Best Practices Primer, which follows last year’s refresh of the Universal Best Practices and the updated Federal Sector Best Practices introduced earlier this year. Recognizing the need for sector-specific guidelines, the new primer is designed to offer actionable insights for design-build teams tackling the distinct challenges in transportation and aviation projects. DBIA’s commitment to maintaining industry-standard design-build resources, education and certification programs drove the evolution of these best practices. The primer was updated from its 2016 release by seasoned…

By Roland Murphy for AZBEX Fain Signature Group is looking to add to its Prescott Valley-area developments with a proposal for Lakeshore 650, a 652-acre planned area development west of Lakeshore Drive and Fain Road. Working as the master developer in partnership with Brown Homes, FSG is proposing a development plan that will build out over a roughly 20-year cycle and ultimately deliver a community with up to 3,500 residential units and a 100-acre core with 348.1KSF of commercial uses. They are requesting a rezoning from large lot residential to planned area development to create a master-planned community. According to…

By BEX Staff for AZBEX City to City Commercial Real Estate is serving as the developer representing a collection of landowners who want to convert 104 acres at 19th Avenue and Baseline Road in Phoenix from a mix of ranch and residential zoning to a mixed-use master-planned area with commercial, office, single-family and multifamily residences. The largely vacant property has primarily been used as a wholesale tree nursery for several years, according to local news reports. The landowners are incorporated as River View Growers LLC, according to the Phoenix staff report. According to the article, Baseline Trees is the majority…

Mack Real Estate Group has won its bid to purchase more than 2,300 acres in the master development area around the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plant in north Phoenix. MREG provided the only bid in the May 29 Arizona State Land Department auction and claimed the land for the minimum bid price of $56.28M. ViaWest Group and an entity of the Wolfswinkel Family had previously registered to bid on the site. Representatives of both groups attended the auction, but neither entered a bid. MREG had gotten the auction process started in January when it submitted an application to develop the…

By Charlie Popeck/Green Ideas Building Science Consultants At the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Conference in late 2023, the new LEED Version 5 was the main topic of interest. At this annual conference, the USGBC soft-launched a radical structural overhaul to all the LEED rating systems and also released a full draft of LEED v5 for Operations and Maintenance: Existing Buildings. The USGBC is planning to release LEED v5 in late 2024 and will be available for projects to register in early 2025. The three overarching goals of the new LEED v5 system are Climate Action, Quality of Life and…