City Council will lease land to ASU for dorms
Ginger D. Richardson
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 11, 2007 12:00 AM
PHOENIX - City Council members agreed Wednesday to lease several parcels of downtown land to Arizona State University so that the property can be redeveloped into a $150 million student housing project.
Detailed plans have not yet been released but Deputy City Manager David Cavazos said that early concepts call for the construction of two 16-story towers that average about 170 feet in height.
The towers' design and construction will be funded entirely by a private developer, who will, in turn, charge students rent. advertisement
"We are very excited about this project," Cavazos said. The student housing will be built in two phases, the first of which will open in fall 2008, and contain about 700 to 750 beds. The second phase will bring an additional 500 to 550 beds to downtown.
The project will be on the northern edge of the downtown Phoenix campus, just north of Taylor Street, between First and Second streets. The prime location means the dorm will be sandwiched between the university's primary academic buildings.
It is also forcing the relocation of a few existing downtown businesses, including Mary Ann Avila's Downtown Laundry and Dry Cleaners, which is being razed.
But on Wednesday, Avila and her attorney said they were in support of the student housing plan.
Avila will receive $200,000 from the developer and her current landlord, plus relocation assistance from the city.
She said she is close to signing a new deal that would allow her to reopen her laundry elsewhere in the downtown area, although she declined to disclose the specific location.
Representatives from the Valley Youth Theatre also spoke in favor of the plan. Officials there had been expected to oppose the student housing proposal because of worries it may encroach on city-owned land that had been set aside for their own expansion plans.
However, a Wednesday meeting with Cavazos and other city staff seemed to put those concerns to rest.
"We are very encouraged by the meeting this afternoon," said Bob Cooper, Valley Youth's producing artistic director, who added that he was "very excited" about the ASU project.
But, he said, "It was important to us that it wasn't done at the expense of the children that the Valley Youth Theatre has been supporting for the past 18 years."
Cavazos said that the city and ASU have pledged to work with the Valley Youth Theatre on their expansion efforts and would look at retaining a private firm to redevelop the roughly 35,000 square feet of vacant land around its existing building. They also will work with them on potential funding sources, he said.
Details will need to be worked out over the next 30 to 60 days.
ASU is under a tight deadline to deliver the project, considered critical to the success of the new campus.
Last year in Tempe, more than 1,300 students from the College of Public Programs, the College of Nursing, University College and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication lived in on-campus housing.
By fall 2008, all of those programs will have moved to downtown Phoenix, where ASU currently has beds for only 260 students.
Two 16-story towers sure will be nice on the northern edge of DT. Can't wait. Should help the AZ Center towers blend in a little better and not look so distant from the core, of course, the Sheraton Hotel will do a better job of that. Great news lately, and it sounds as if most of the projects aren't of the pipe dream nature, it sounds like they'll actually be built. Great news about CPE, I hope they are still planning on going TALL!
