Cool renderings of the 7th/mill project. I was getting worried that it died with the lack of news on it. Hopefully that one gets up and going sometime this year. Oh heres some news article about the lack of news on this project, but you guys should all know about this one...
After 20 years, ASU's Tempe Center still in limbo
William Hermann
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 7, 2008 10:24 AM
Heather DePrator and her 1 1/2-year-old son live near the old Tempe Center on the southeastern corner of University Drive and Mill Avenue. She hopes a grocery store will be in the mix when Arizona State University constructs its planned mix of commercial, housing and university buildings on the site.
"There's no grocery store downtown, and we could really use one right there," she said.
But two decades after ASU began planning to develop the site, and nearly a decade after kicking out all the strip center's tenants, DePrator and everybody else hoping for something good at Tempe Center may still have a long wait.
University officials say there are no plans on the horizon, or even just over the horizon, for doing anything with the site where once there were high hopes for an exciting development that would link Mill Avenue with the university and would provide ASU with a beautiful and useful gateway to the campus.
The shopping center, which was built in 1956, was bought by ASU in 1983 for $5.5 million. It has housed, among other things, a Pic 'n' Save, Tower Records, Ray's ASU Barber Shop, Jam's Cafe, Books Etc. and a grocery store called Stabler's.
In 1987, ASU proposed a $42 million plan to transform the center into an office and shopping center beginning in 1994. The plan called for a six-story $25 million office building for university administration and various other ASU activities, a one-story $17 million retail center and underground parking.
In 1992, a 20-year ASU master plan showed a new gateway to the campus through a renovated Tempe Center. Plans included a diagonal pathway from the corner into the university's center to provide a pedestrian link to downtown Tempe, along with a mixture of single-story and multi-story buildings housing campus commercial uses, office space, academic areas, restaurants, shops and underground parking.
In 1998, it was announced that ASU was finishing up negotiations with developers and those plans were moving forward. The first phase, which would be built at the where Chili's is, would be done by the end of 1999 and the second phase would be done by the end of 2001, officials said at the time. The existing buildings would be razed in June 2000, they said.
They never were.
In 2004, ASU brought to the public a new $500 million mixed-use project for the 13 acres, which it had renamed the Arts and Business Gateway District. It included space for the College of Business, Fine Arts College and Architecture College, as well as general academic space, retail, a boutique hotel, conference and lecture space, residences for both students and non-students and a grocery store.
ASU selected national real estate development firm Concord Eastridge as its partner in developing the site. Designs showing soaring buildings and community gathering spaces were presented to neighbors at public meetings.
It has seemed for years as if groundbreaking would come any time.
It never did.
University planner Richard Stanley said that despite intense efforts to make the project come together, nobody has been able to "make the numbers work." "The goal was, and is, to have the site turned into something that is a point of integration with Mill Avenue and not a walled corner that isolated the university," he said. "We did a lot of work with Concord, analyzing very substantial parking issues associated with residential, retail and university buildings, and trying to come up with a phased plan. In the end, the costs to the university of pursuing the project was more than we could handle within our existing budgets."
Those existing budgets are bursting at the seams under the pressure of constructing massive projects at the downtown Phoenix campus, and with projects at the west and east campus sites, Stanley said.
At this point, Concord is no longer involved and the project has been suspended.
That's a disappointment to Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman.
"It hurts Tempe having an old strip center underutilized and not providing benefits to Tempe and the university," he said. "I wish the university would put together a realistic plan and start doing it. They have the talent and ability to do that."
Stanley said someday it will happen.
"We continue to see a long-term future for that site to be a point of integration between Tempe's downtown and the university; we won't give up on that vision," he said. "We just have to explore other ways to accomplish that."
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