By BEX Staff for AZBEX
An upcoming Arizona State Land Department auction of more than 2,340 acres southwest of Interstate 17 and Carefree Highway, adjacent to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company campus, has drawn a short but impressive collection of qualified bidders.
The minimum bid price for the site is $56.28M, although a much higher final bid is likely.
A report issued last month by Gruen Gruen + Associates identified the qualified bidders as:
- Mack Real Estate Group,
- W Holdings, which is a land company affiliated with the Wolfswinkel Family, and
- ViaWest Group.
MREG submitted an application to purchase the site at auction in January, with the intention to develop the Mack Real Estate Group Biscuit Flats Technology Park. The other two bidders have registered since then.
The auction winner will need to invest in the infrastructure development of the Sonoran Oasis Science and Technology Park, which is anchored by TSMC and includes the Biscuit Flats site.
Since costs to build out infrastructure on the property could exceed $1B, potential bidders were screened against a number of criteria, including at least 10 years of development experience, commercial real estate infrastructure development, the ability to fund at least $150M in infrastructure costs, and experience in creating commercial projects of at least $400M.
According to local news reports, the land up for auction could accommodate 10MSF of industrial development, 12.8MSF of office, 4.4MSF of retail, hotel space for up to 568 rooms, and almost 9,000 new apartments.
The winning bidder will be able to develop the land and/or sell parcels to other developers once it meets the required infrastructure benchmarks.