“Hot.” “Dense.” “Booming.” “Blazing.” “Robust.” “Diverse.”
As a reporter, you’re trained to avoid adjectives in general and superlatives in particular. As an editor and columnist, you live for them.
The Arizona Private Architecture/Engineering/Construction and Commercial Real Estate markets have certainly provided ample opportunity for superlatives bordering on hyperbole for the past several years.
That frenetic pace, though, comes with its own set of challenges, particularly in terms of developing and maintaining perspective.
A few years ago, back when I was just a reporter for AZBEX, I had to hunt for individual projects of sufficient note for front page write-ups. Now, with a project database approaching 4,650 individual developments, with new entries added every week, I’m putting together overviews of entire ZIP Codes’ worth of projects running into the 10s of billions of dollars and 10s of millions of square feet just to keep up.
With all the new additions coming onto the development lists across the state, it’s often hard to get even a tenuous grasp of the big picture. If you’re anything like me, you run into so many impressive individual projects that the forest gets lost for all the individual trees competing for time and attention.
The State of Private Development
We all know the private development market in Arizona is “Hot,” “Dense,” “Booming,” “Blazing,” “Robust,” and “Diverse.” How many of us, though, can say we have even the most basic grasp of its scale at the moment?
In preparing this column, I downloaded all the Private and Public-Private-Partnership projects in the DATABEX project database. I then eliminated everything that had been completed or canceled. While I usually cull master plans from my overviews, I left them in this time since there are so many on the books and many don’t yet have individual projects associated with them. For those that do, I ask that you excuse some minor redundancies creeping their way into the overall snapshot.
Keep in mind, also – again owing in large part to those master projects – slightly more than 21% of projects do not have square footage estimates and 10.5% do not have estimated construction values.
Even with those omissions, when parsing out the overall numbers, I think it’s safe to add, “Staggering,” and “Head-spinning,” to the list of adjectives above. Across all Private types and statuses, DATABEX shows:
- Nearly 1,550 individual projects,
- Total known Private sector construction valuations of nearly $559B,
- Total estimated build area of more than 497MSF,
- More than 525 projects Under Construction,
- Nearly 440 projects in various stages of Design,
- Nearly 675 Multifamily projects,
- More than 275 Industrial projects, and
- Approximately 200 Hospitality projects, including hotels/resorts/casinos, theme parks and restaurants.
The BEX 2022 Private Development Summit
At the individual sector level, Arizona A/E/C and CRE professionals are fortunate to have several groups providing insights into trends and development over the course of the year. Most of them, even if they rely on disparate outside sources for their data, do a good job.
Even BEX contributes to this pool with our Leading Market Series, focusing on a given sector and providing detailed overviews of trends and developments in Industrial, Healthcare, Multifamily and others.
The sole downside to LMS and most other events is they focus on individual sectors and, much as many of us would like to, hitting a dozen or more events over the course of a year is a challenge. Even more of a challenge is compiling all the information from those events into a useful and current omnibus.
There’s really only one event that covers the totality of private development in the state: The BEX Private Development Summit, and it’s just around the corner.
Like all good events, the Private Development Summit seems to grow every year, and 2022 is no exception. The panelists and topics list read like a who’s who discussing what’s what.
First off, BEX President and Founder Rebekah Morris will offer up a deep dive on the Arizona CRE market with latest insights and statistics on market drivers and the state of the industry, along with a peek at what’s to come.
That will be followed by a “Quick Hit” providing an overview of projects in Pinal County, one of the state’s fastest growing areas.
Next up, four experts from around Arizona will discuss Overcoming Challenges Facing New Development and tackle topics including zoning & entitlement, NIMBY-ism, the skilled labor shortage, and building materials availability.
Two more Quick Hits follow, covering an overview and updates of the projects Banner Health is working on and what’s happening with the TSMC development in north Phoenix.
After that, attendees will get an expansive view into the state of Industrial with another expert panel talking discussing when and if Industrial will start to level out, how much runway is left and the impacts of rising construction and materials prices.
The next Quick Hit will give an update on SimonCRE’s Prasada development, followed by the day’s last expert panel talking about Moving from the Exurbs to the Suburbs, where they will discuss how cities are working to attract new development for services and employment to accommodate their burgeoning populations.
Along with all this curated expertise, as our first full-scale, In-Person-Only event since the pandemic started loosening its stranglehold on all things physically interactive, there will be ample opportunity for networking before, during and after the event.
It’s easy, given the day-to-day volume of work we all have to accommodate, to get bogged down with our own outcroppings of specific trees, but private development in Arizona is a dense and massive forest. Those who want or need to take in the full arboreal scope owe it to themselves to carve off one-half of one day and take in the sights.
A full program and event overview, complete with the registration link, is available here.