[el_avocado]

Thunderbird to become live/work school
'Changing dynamic' spurs plan

Scott Wong
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 30, 2006

The Thunderbird business school will take the first step today to transform its Glendale campus into an education-based urban village to meet the growing needs of its 1,000 students, faculty and staff members.

Preliminary plans call for shrinking the campus' educational core to about 40 acres and ringing it with a 175-room hotel, hundreds of live/work units, upscale apartments, office space, stores and restaurants.

Officials today will request that the city amend its General Plan to allow for the new uses, said John Berry, a land-use attorney representing the internationally ranked business school.

In about three weeks, the school at Greenway Road and 59th Avenue will request that the property be rezoned.

Construction could begin on vacant parcels at the 150-acre campus as early as next year. Officials at Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management, could not say Thursday when the project would be completed.

The changes are being proposed in response to a demographic shift at the school, Chief Operating Officer Tim Propp said.

The university's more than 600 full-time students hail from more than 60 countries. The school's leadership courses, consortiums and other non-degree programs are attracting a growing number of foreign executives. And the school is seeing more students who are married and have children.

"We've got a changing dynamic," Propp said.

Because of that, school officials want to partner with private developers to create places on campus for full-time and visiting students to work, shop, eat and sleep.

Executive apartments could be leased on a long- or short-term basis. For-sale units would provide residents with an upstairs living space and a downstairs study or office.

Some of the housing units could be rented or owned by employees at the nearby Banner Thunderbird Medical Center, which is bulking up its staff.

The project would be built in several phases. First, vacant land along the eastern and southern edges of the property would be developed. When new apartments and for-sale units were built out, the school would redevelop existing student housing complexes, a 65-room hotel and other older buildings on the northwestern corner of the site.

Pedestrian and bicycle paths would be created to better link housing, shops and other spaces with the school's center.

Councilman Steve Frate, whose Sahuaro District includes Thunderbird, said Glendale would work in concert with the school to help realize what he characterized as a "quality infill project."

"It is a priority; it is a project that has a lot of merit to it," Frate said. "I will do whatever I can to help them, and the city will, too."