Phoenix Development News (3)

[MiEncanto]

Between park central and the proposed development across the street on the west side of central, this entire area would look dramatically different.

[xymox]

Originally Posted by ASU Diablo

Central Park PBJ article and new renderings below. Looks fantastic!

https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/...d-project.html

Are the taller buildings not on central and Indian School? Another skyline gap…

[combusean]

No, they're clustered on the north of the site plan. The project on the NWC of Central and Glenrosa kitty-corner to this will have a tower or two.

The fact that they're proposing towers at all at this location has always been a long shot anyways.

[TJPHXskyscraperfan]

Originally Posted by combusean

No, they're clustered on the north of the site plan. The project on the NWC of Central and Glenrosa kitty-corner to this will have a tower or two.

The fact that they're proposing towers at all at this location has always been a long shot anyways.

I disagree, between this and the project across Central to the North, this area is going to be vibrant! Great location for towers with the view of the city, park and Camelback. It can almost be like a Scottsdale Quarter but more walkable. Hopefully they can get some decent stores in there! So tough with online shopping at this point but maybe an Amazon store, a few clothing stores and specialty stores!

[combusean]

Me to TJ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TfCgIRPZXI

With apologies, it's hard to just spin up development like this. Why should there be high-rises at this corner? Five stories and some money shots are great.

[TJPHXskyscraperfan]

Originally Posted by combusean

Me to TJ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TfCgIRPZXI

With apologies, it's hard to just spin up development like this. Why should there be high-rises at this corner? Five stories and some money shots are great.

The question is, why would there not be towers on this corner? We have office towers all up and down Central that were build decades ago. Now we have high demand for residential density. There’s not a whole lot of land left along central so what else do you do but build up! With the amount towers going up downtown I have no doubt that we will see plenty of 20-50 story towers going up along Central over the next 10 years. There is no other area in Phoenix where they will build towers so this will be it!

[combusean]

No tower has been built new in Midtown since 1989. By the time Phoenix recovered from the S&L crisis, which it was pretty much ground zero of, Scottsdale became the Valley's premier office destination and now Tempe has taken that crown. All the buildings there are now obsolete. The lawyers, nonprofits, and government tenants that are Midtown's bread and butter have never made for a decent area.

There needs to be some kind of destination there to command the rents than be more of a spillover from downtown. Anything--music venues, decent bars or clubs, sports venues, pretty much all that downtown has--needs to be done in Midtown as well. Then towers would start sprouting up.

Park Central is zoned for something like 650 or 700', or was at one point, and the area was zoned for unlimited height between 3rd and 3rd in the old HR zoning district, but I really doubt I'll see that in my lifetime. The more desirable parts of Midtown are too close to single family homes that are very politically powerful in Phoenix, for example.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by combusean

No tower has been built new in Midtown since 1989. By the time Phoenix recovered from the S&L crisis, which it was pretty much ground zero of, Scottsdale became the Valley's premier office destination and now Tempe has taken that crown. All the buildings there are now obsolete. The lawyers, nonprofits, and government tenants that are Midtown's bread and butter have never made for a decent area.

There needs to be some kind of destination there to command the rents than be more of a spillover from downtown. Anything--music venues, decent bars or clubs, sports venues, pretty much all that downtown has--needs to be done in Midtown as well. Then towers would start sprouting up.

Park Central is zoned for something like 650 or 700', or was at one point, and the area was zoned for unlimited height between 3rd and 3rd in the old HR zoning district, but I really doubt I'll see that in my lifetime. The more desirable parts of Midtown are too close to single family homes that are very politically powerful in Phoenix, for example.

You are going to get midrise apartments, hotels and medical ureses in Midtown. It's become a medical focused area.

I would focus my efforts on midtown like the Texas medical Center as model.

[combusean]

I think if Park Central had more vision and wasn't busy putting up suburban Starbucks drive throughs and 4-story business-class hotels, it really could have been an asset for the area. Similarly, Central Park (oh brother) is buildable, but also lacks vision. A 20-story hotel in Central Park for example would be risky as hell would be just the kind of thing that synergizes with the events in Steele Park already. Central Phoenix really lacks on the kind of resort hotels that the Valley is famous for. A hotel with a water feature in enough acreage would be mind-bogglingly cool for example.

[combusean]

Good point Obadno. ... you're right the medical uses are an asset, but the area is overbuilt for that already. There are already vacant/for sale medical buildings just next to Park Central on 3rd Ave.

It's a damn shame Mayo and Phoenix and ASU are all buddy buddy in the northeast. I get Desert Ridge is a blank slate and doesn't need to convince Middle America to move out there, but it's exactly that sort of thing that's lacking in Midtown.

I also have to wonder what Arizona would be like with the kind of Texas-style thinking that led to TMC and that sort of thing.

[Obadno]

I would say that midtown didn't really have any sort of identity or higher concept to its development, it was just a hyper growth oddity from the 1960's

Much like downtown it basically sat languished for the last 50 years but now very much organically due to a close proximity of three large and well-known hospitals with specialty focuses (Phoenix Childrens, Barrow at St. Joes and banners HQ) we now have a perfectly suited area to do a medical Focus.

Phoenix College is nearby with nursing as one of its flagship programs, you have Creighton medical school now . Park Central decided to cater its redevelopment on Medical Tenants and the city now has designated the whole area as a "BioMed zone"

Hell you could even say Copper point Insurance with its HQ in midtown and its focus on Work Comp is sort of tangentially medical.

Anyway, its primed to be a little copy of dense medical centers around the US

Mayo can push its top-down plan for a biomed city all it wants but organically developing areas that the city then jumps in to support always work better than master-planned ground up attempts at these kinds of neighborhoods.

[combusean]

Money has always spoken the loudest in Phoenix. Even before Urban Form was a thing and while CityScape was going up, the developers had a hellacious time with this little building because it so very much broke the mold. Limited setbacks AND mixed use when all you have is C-2 zoning? Wouldn't surprise me if the company (martha + mary?) went bankrupt as a result.


I don't even know what an organically-grown medical district looks like at this point. Phoenix can't even get it together with its own two districts and the greater area and then you have the IDEA campus in Tempe trying to do the same.

I think what this really looks like at the end of the day is which big business/research establishment/non profit/etc is going to play the cities against each other. Like the sales tax incentives of years past that I think the state finally had to step in and shut down, there's only individual profit and no public benefit.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by combusean

Money has always spoken the loudest in Phoenix.

We live in a society.

Originally Posted by combusean

I don't even know what an organically-grown medical district looks like at this point. Phoenix can't even get it together with its own two districts and the greater area and then you have the IDEA campus in Tempe trying to do the same.

It looks like what's going on in midtown and the downtown medical scene is doing extremely well, its just research focused with labs and schools as opposed to Midtown which is business and medical in practice. the Idea campus is a non-entity its a 3-building office complex.

Originally Posted by combusean

I think what this really looks like at the end of the day is which big business/research establishment/non profit/etc is going to play the cities against each other. Like the sales tax incentives of years past that I think the state finally had to step in and shut down, there's only individual profit and no public benefit.

I'm not sure what the complaint is here? Midtown has been doing its own thing with basically no action from the city for years, only now has the city decided in retrospect to take what was happening ant make it formal.

in my opinion such organic neighborhoods that a city can identify and support from the outside work best because they aren't arbitrary creations dreamed up in some planning department.

[PHXFlyer11]

Originally Posted by combusean

I think if Park Central had more vision and wasn't busy putting up suburban Starbucks drive throughs and 4-story business-class hotels, it really could have been an asset for the area. Similarly, Central Park (oh brother) is buildable, but also lacks vision. A 20-story hotel in Central Park for example would be risky as hell would be just the kind of thing that synergizes with the events in Steele Park already. Central Phoenix really lacks on the kind of resort hotels that the Valley is famous for. A hotel with a water feature in enough acreage would be mind-bogglingly cool for example.

This doesn't seem fair. Midtown was pretty dead before Park Central took some pretty significant risk to reinvent itself. The density and mix is pretty impressive. Just because they didn't put up towers (there's risk, then there's stupid), shouldn't invite criticism. They took a dead mall and turned into into a 24/7 residential, education, retail, office and fitness hub.

[Obadno]

^^^ Indeed, here is a drive through in the very suburban neighborhood of Harlem

https://goo.gl/maps/4P4b621a1iznLbGL9

[Obadno]

In Other news the AZ Grande is going to expand!

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...s/70473487007/

The Arizona Grand Resort in southeast Phoenix is working on plans for a major expansion that could add apartment units, additional hotel rooms and new conference space to the resort’s sprawling grounds.

The resort’s owners submitted plans to Phoenix to develop some of the vacant portions of the resort, potentially adding residential rentals to the mix of uses on the site.

The Arizona Grand property is about 60 acres total, on the south side of Baseline Road west of Interstate 10. The property includes several large, vacant pieces and parking lots around the perimeter of the resort, including one piece that is in Tempe, along Baseline, north of the hotel.

A conceptual site plan shows the planned and existing development at the Arizona Grand Resort.
“It is now time to develop portions of the site that are effectively infill sites because they have never been developed and update other portions of the property/facilities to ensure Arizona Grand Resort can continue to provide modern amenities for the area’s residents and visitors,” the resort’s leadership team wrote in a proposal to Phoenix to begin the approval process for the project.

[MiEncanto]

That resort is already so huge I didn't expect this.

I hope the put some money into existing units cuz it badly needs a facelift.

At 1100 keys that opens it up to some very large conferences which is cool.

[TJPHXskyscraperfan]

Anyone know of something going up on the southwest corner of central and Indian School next to Yoshi’s? It’s gated with construction workers and equipment right now!

[CrestedSaguaro]

Originally Posted by TJPHXskyscraperfan

Anyone know of something going up on the southwest corner of central and Indian School next to Yoshi’s? It’s gated with construction workers and equipment right now!

No clue. I haven't seen any permits pulled for that lot. I thought I heard a few years ago that maybe some multi-family was planned for the corner, but never confirmed.

[TJPHXskyscraperfan]

Originally Posted by CrestedSaguaro

No clue. I haven't seen any permits pulled for that lot. I thought I heard a few years ago that maybe some multi-family was planned for the corner, but never confirmed.

It’s a pretty small lot but that would be awesome!