Luxury resort, convention center planned on former General Motors site
A destination resort and a convention center are the key parts of a major redevelopment planned on the former GM Proving Grounds in Mesa by DMB Associates in Scottsdale and Gaylord Entertainment of Nashville, Tenn.
The proposal announced today includes DMB’s continued partnership with Westcor for retail planning on the property in east Mesa and DMB’s agreement for an 18-hole championship golf course designed by Tom Fazio.
Although details about the size and design of the resort and convention center have yet to be completed, the hotel likely will be the largest in Arizona, according to Drew Brown, DMB’s chief executive.
Also undetermined are the size of the retail component, which is to be designed by Westcor, and the timing for development.
Gaylord Entertainment CEO and Chairman Colin V. Reed said his company’s new property in east Mesa “will become one of the most sought-after tourist and business travel destinations in the United States and a top choice by meeting planners for conventions.”
Gaylord’s other properties include Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville; Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Fla.; Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas, outside Dallas-Fort Worth; and Gaylord National on the Potomac in Prince George’s County, Md., near Washington D.C.
Gaylord once planned a luxury resort on the south side of Tempe Town Lake.
DMB bought the property from General Motors in 2006. The land next to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport is the largest remaining contiguous parcel within the core Mesa planning area.
“The airport is an essential part of the formula for creating the type of development this area is capable of supporting,” said John Bradley, DMB vice president.
New talks to focus on south Scottsdale redevelopment
Residents of south Scottsdale are invited to participate in a series of discussions to plan the future of their neighborhoods.
City planners want input from residents, business and property owners who own property south of Indian Bend Road, excluding the downtown area. Several two-hour discussions, called café sessions, are planned in October and November to create the Southern Scottsdale Community Area Plan.
The new discussions will be based upon themes identified in the Spring 2008 Southern Scottsdale Visioning Workshop series.
Dates and locations for the new discussions are: Oct. 1, 11:30-1:30 p.m., Paiute Neighborhood Center, 6535 E. Osborn Road; Oct. 14, 6-8 p.m., SkySong Center, 1475 N. Scottsdale Road; Oct. 29, 11:30-1:30 p.m., Kerr Cultural Center, 6110 N. Scottsdale Road; Nov. 12, 6-8 p.m., Granite Reef Senior Center, 1700 N. Granite Reef Road; and Nov. 20, 6-8 p.m., Kerr Cultural Center, 6110 N. Scottsdale Road.
For more information, visit www.scottsdaleaz.gov/planning/areaplans, or call Scottsdale Advance Planning at 480-312-7990.
Wholesale distribution company moving to southwest Phoenix
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance is relocating to the southwest Valley from its existing facility at 16th and Riverview streets in Phoenix.
The company has signed a lease for nearly 175,000 square feet of warehouse and distribution space at Buckeye Logistics Center at 6825 W. Buckeye Road in Phoenix. The company will take occupancy Jan. 1, 2009.
The Buckeye Logistics Center is a two-building complex owned by Principal Global Investors of Des Moines, Iowa.
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance was represented in the lease negotiations by Greg White at CB Richard Ellis. White said the company had outgrown its existing space and needed larger facilities to meet its expanding operations. He said the Southwest Valley was chosen because of the new warehouse buildings available and because of the labor available in the submarket. He added that the Buckeye Logistics Center was developed by The Alter Group.
Principal Global Investors was represented in this lease by Pat Harlan, Steve Sayre and Katy Boyd of Cushman & Wakefield, who serve as exclusive leasing agents for Buckeye Logistics Center.
HD Supply Facilities Maintenance is a wholesale distribution company providing products and services to customers in the infrastructure and energy, maintenance, repair and improvement and specialty construction markets. The company is one of the largest diversified wholesale distributors in North America, with about 900 locations.
Dispatches from Ireland: Days 10 through 16
The pungent scent of peat is in the air today. The brisk wind off Galway Bay is filled with waves of mist.
But the cool, windy and thoroughly gray day has little impact on tourists and shoppers in downtown Galway. Umbrellas and hooded jackets are everywhere. Rainproof covers are on the backpacks as large as their owners. Even baby buggies of the locals are fitted with clear plastic coverings.
The city center’s street musicians ignore the wind and mist. Today’s performers include two solo guitar players. One sings about Australia. Outside a bookstore, another musician has his lips pursed on his saxophone. He plays mellow jazz nonstop, leaning back on a metal post, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Down the block, an elderly man with a bent body and a gentle voice seeks donations. He leans on his cane with one hand. In his other is his soft drink cup raised as high as his stooped body. His hand and cup remind me of a baby bird in a nest, with its outstretched neck and hungry mouth wide open.
“Thank you, thank you,” the man says softly to a woman who stops her errands to drop a coin in his cup.
On another day, the street musicians coaxing magic from their instruments included a woman with a guitar next to a man playing his uilleann pipes. His instrument is similar to bagpipes but the air is supplied by bellows strapped under his right arm, instead of a mouthpiece through which he could blow into the pipes. Spread before them is a jacket spotted with several coins tossed by listeners.
The duo played two doors down from a bakery giving off aromas of fresh breads, cakes and sandwich buns – called baps – filled with turkey and cranberry, tuna, or Cajun chicken. The bakery’s aroma alternates with that of peat, the brick-shaped fuel shoveled from the countryside’s bogs.
On Sunday, Aug. 24, our bus tour stopped at Cashel for lunch and a tour of the Rock of Cashel, a medieval abbey that has been a seat of religious or royal power since the 5th Century. The stone cathedral and other structures tower over the village and the surrounding Tipperary plain because they were built on a limestone outcropping.
A few days later, we boarded a smaller bus and traveled from Galway to Kylemore Abbey in the Connemara region. It was a two-hour trip, including several stops for photos of the countryside. Timewasters, I thought. A bus ride is an excellent way to see the countryside, but the day was overcast and misty with low-hanging clouds. Hardly the day for decent photos. Others on the bus were from China, France, Dublin, Italy, Alabama, Arizona, Illinois and Washington state.
Eventually, we arrived at Kylemore Abbey, a historic neo-Gothic castle that made up for the bus trip. Set next to Lough Pollacappul, at the foot of Duchruach Mountain, the abbey has been the Monastic home of the Benedictine Nuns since 1920, when the nuns relocated from war-torn Belgium. The property dates to the 1860s when English industrialist Mitchell Henry and his wife Margaret built their Kylemore Castle and its 13,000 acres with the fortune he inherited from his father, a successful cotton merchant.
Henry later served 14 years in the House of Commons, representing County Galway. In 1903, Henry sold his castle to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester. Later, a London banker became the owner, and he sold the property and 10,000 acres in 1920 to the nuns.
For many years, the nuns have operated Kylemore Abbey as an international boarding secondary school and a day school for local girls. According to Wikipedia, the nuns plan to close the school in 2010. Kylemore’s name originates from the Irish words for “great wood” – Coill Mor. And great wood is an appropriate name. The short walk from the castle to the Gothic church Henry erected nearby as a memorial for his wife is along the lake and next to woods as dense and lush as those on the coasts of Oregon and Washington state. Small streams run down the mountain and into the lake under the trail between the abbey and the church.
On the way back to our hotel, at about 5 p.m., our bus drove the highway along Galway Bay. Banners and hair flew horizontally in the wind. Pedestrians in jackets and joggers in shorts and T-shirts were on the promenade along the bay. And in the bay, about 50 feet offshore, we saw a woman in a red swimsuit bobbing alone between the white caps of the cold Atlantic. Watching her on the shore was a spectator. Or a potential rescuer.
One night this past week, we braved the wind and mist to attend an evening presentation of “Trad on the Prom” at the Salthill Hotel in west Galway. The name refers to traditional Irish music on the promenade. Of the five musicians, several had appeared in the “Riverdance” tours.
The performance included several Irish step dances. The dancers’ feet and legs were blurs. Their faces were intense and their shirts were stained with sweat. The lead guitar player’s talk between performances was from memory, not teleprompters. The group sang about Ireland and its history and loves and hopes. The live summer performance is memorable because it lacked commercials and the superficial six-pack flash of American television.
Signs of recovery showing in metro Phoenix housing market
Despite the stormy economic times, and the gloomy reports from some uninformed quarters, “the housing market in metro Phoenix remains a glass well more than half full,” says R.L. Brown, publisher of The Phoenix Housing Market Letter.
In an economy struggling “with some really serious problems as well as being challenged by low consumer confidence,” Brown sees the combined sales of nearly 7,700 new and resale homes in July “a strong testament to the underlying strength and resilience of the market here.”
“This is not 2005 and will not be 2005 again, but this is far from a dead housing market in spite of the economic mess we find ourselves in,” Brown said.
His newest report shows that new home closings in metro Phoenix are down nearly 44 percent, with 1,764 sales reported for the month of July, compared to 3,128 for the same month in 2007.
Permits issued in July for new homes totaled 1,493, down 41.7 percent from 2,560 in July a year ago. From January through July, 9,738 permits were issued, down 58 percent from the 23,222 issued for the comparable period in 2007, Brown’s report shows.
In the resale market for July, sales were up 16.9 percent – 5,928, compared to 5,072 a year ago.
And among condo conversions, sales totaled 153, down more than 60 percent from the 388 sold in July 2007, Brown says.
“Both the new and resale markets in metro Phoenix continued at just about the same pace that we have seen over the last several months, with new home closings sagging slightly and resale closings adding some velocity from sales of REO properties and the banks’ growing willingness to negotiate short sales for homeowners in trouble,” Brown said.
REO properties refers to “real estate owned” properties repossessed by lenders after borrowers were unable to make their payments.
Brown adds that he is seeing a trend among resales. In July, 43 percent of the resales in Maricopa County and 69 percent of the resales in Pinal County were REO sales or owned by the banks. Brown says that means buyers are responding to properties that are “priced to sell,” and it also means that non-REO properties that are not priced according to the local market have little chance of selling.
“This situation is not likely to change much over the next several months, and perhaps not until well into 2009,” he said. “It is very clear that the REO sales are essentially setting the value of the housing market in many or most neighborhoods in this region, and we anticipate that this will likely continue for many months to come.”
Brown also correctly points out that while foreclosures dominate today’s headlines, they are a very small part of the total picture. He says that “while tragic, the foreclosure mess will have the most dramatic direct impact on a relatively small percentage of the homeowners in Phoenix.”
He goes on to say that while the foreclosures “will indeed be painful and will cause a general devaluation in housing values in most of the region,” those unfortunate situations “will not cause economic tragedy for the vast majority of homeowners in the region.”
That’s because most homeowners “don’t have to sell into this market and aren’t behind in their payments.” In fact, he continues, the foreclosure challenges “will force a rethinking of the debt burden of many who will change their spending and credit habits (and) for the better.”
Brown is right. Many homeowners are facing foreclosure because they overextended themselves. In some cases, it was because lenders and builders winked at their own rules regarding minimum income qualifications.
Brown’s report spotlights the changes taking place in the market today, such as the market’s healthy absorption of repossessed homes, banks accepting short sales, homebuilders revaluing their land inventories, and new strategies facing the housing industry for the next several years.
As builders write down or walk away from their land inventories, or come up with updated land cost strategies, “builder economics will indeed allow profitable homebuilding of products” designed for the new home buyers, Brown says.
On his Web site – www.rlbrownreports.com – Brown has a special housing report on the metro Phoenix housing market.
Dispatches from Ireland: Days 5 through 9
The war must be over. The ship is gone.
Love our driver’s humor. We passed the harbor in Galway, where one day earlier we saw an Irish naval ship docked. It’s gone now, so the war must be over.
We arrived in Galway on Monday, Aug. 18, after a drive across Ireland from east to west. We left Dublin in a light rain and heavy traffic. It was 8:45 a.m., rush hour. We saw the James Joyce Bridge, named after the literary giant, and we again saw part of the city’s original stone wall, dated 1240.
On the road headed to the west of Ireland, we left County Kildare and entered County Mead, called the royal county. It originally was home to the nation’s early royal families.
We stopped at Clonmacnoise about 10:45. This remote medieval monastary was founded by St. Ciaran in 545. “Known for its scholarship and piety, it thrived from the 7th to the 12th century. Many kings of Tara and of Connaught were buried here,” according to Ireland, a guide by Eyewitness Travel.
The guidebook says Clonmacnoise was plundered by the Vikings and the Anglo-Normans before it fell to the English in 1552. Walking among the gravestones and church ruins, the site’s religious importance is penetrating. Pope John Paul II visited Clonmacnoise in 1979. Pilgrims visit the site every Sept. 9, St. Ciaran’s Day. Down the hill a short distance is the River Shannon, which is running higher than normal because of heavy rains in recent weeks.
After a tour of the church site, and then a light lunch of sandwiches, we boarded our bus and resumed our trip to Galway. It was 1:15 p.m. We left the midlands for the west of Ireland.
Along the way, we soaked in the views of lush green pastures, some dotted with sheep and cattle. The farther west we traveled, the more stone walls we saw. This part of Ireland is very rocky, so clearing the land of rocks served two purposes – it made the land usable for pastures, and the rocks were used to create stone fences.
We passed commercial peat bogs, where the peat (called turf) is cut from the ground into bricks and dried for use in fireplaces. By 2:25 p.m., Galway Bay was on our left. We checked in at our hotel, unpacked for dinner and later studied our itinerary for the next day.
On Tuesday, with new energy and full water bottles, we again boarded our bus for a trip to the ferry that would take us to the Aran Islands. The islands in the mouth of Galway Bay have been inhabited since before recorded history. Of the islands’ many ruins, the most well-known is Dun Aengus, a stone fort that is about 2,000 years old. It sits at the edge of a 300-foot drop to the Atlantic Ocean, making it the perfect place to watch for attackers. As long as the day is clear, which it was today. Some visitors crept to the edge on their hands and knees, and then knees and elbows, for a look straight down.
The next day, Wednesday, we were bound for the small community of Cong, in County Mayo. Cong was the setting for the 1950s movie, The Quiet Man, with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Then we left to visit the Connemara Marble Factory. Along the way, our driver told us about Ireland’s reforestation efforts in which forests of pine and spruce were replanted to replace the oak forests cut down during the nation’s rule by England.
On Thursday, we packed for Killarney, our next stop. Along the way, we visited the Cliffs of Moher, a five-mile stretch of sandstone and shale cliffs that rise vertically 650 feet from the Atlantic. We were again lucky – the sun was shining. Often, the cliffs are shrouded in fog or rain.
After lunch at the visitors’ center, we resumed our trek to Killarney. It included a car ferry trip across the River Shannon. The crossing lasted 20 minutes. As we approached Killarney, we saw giant wind turbines on the hillsides, Ireland’s alternative source of electricity.
Today, after a group photo on our hotel steps, we rode by horse-drawn jaunting car (six of us to a car) to Muckross House, an elegant Elizabethan style mansion built in 1843. We’re told the mansion has 365 windows and dozens of fireplaces. Don’t touch the furniture, and no photographs are allowed, our gracious tour guide tells us. Outside, the flower garden dominates the landscaping. Red roses are front and center.
Throughout our trip in this wonderland, we occasionally see a motorist with white knuckles and a look of fear in his or her face. We’re told it’s probably a tourist unfamiliar with driving on the left side of the road.
Arizona Real Estate Highlights
New funding for Tempe condo towers
The developer of Tempe’s tallest building has signed an agreement with a lender that in June filed its Chapter 11 papers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
The agreement signed by Avenue Communities LLC, developer of the luxury high rise Centerpoint Condominiums, and Mortgages Ltd. includes a financing package totaling $75 million.
The identity of the new lender will be disclosed late this month. The new loan package may close by late September, said Avenue Communities Principal and Managing Partner Ken Losch.
The new financing agreement will pay for the completion of the two high rise towers and the 23,150-square-foot public plaza. Losch estimated that Centerpoint’s first residents would begin moving into their condos within 60 to 90 days after the close of the new loan agreement. Tower One has 22 floors, and Tower Two has 30. Combined, the two buildings in downtown Tempe have 375 residences ranging in price from the low $300,000s to penthouse condos priced in the millions.
The development includes a 180-seat Italian restaurant, Trattoria M; a market-café called Aroma; a second location for PurVine, a Napa Valley winemaking facility associated with Signorello Vineyards; and the seventh-floor recreational facility that includes two theaters, a pool, a fitness center, and a demonstration kitchen.
Builder supporting education
School districts and teachers in metro Phoenix are receiving special attention from Berkana Homes.
Educators who tour Berkana townhomes can enter the names of their schools in a drawing for a $1,000 donation from the homebuilder. In addition, any teacher who buys a Berkana townhome will receive a $1,000 donation to their school.
The program, which ends Sept. 30, is part of the company’s Community Champions initiative. Berkana Homes has nine planned communities in the Valley. For more information, visit the company’s Web site, www.BerkanaHomes.com.
Avondale’s new library
A new city library opening Sept. 15 will serve as the anchor building for Avondale’s Old Town plans.
The new $6.2 million library at 495 E. Western Ave. was designed by SmithGroup and built by Sundt Construction. The 12,500-square-foot building will replace the old library at 328 E. Western Ave. Books will be relocated into the new library in early September.
Tempe warehouse sold
A Tolleson company is the new owner of a Tempe warehouse. Russell Sigler Inc., which provides commercial and residential contractors with equipment, parts and technical support, bought the 27,576-square-foot warehouse at 1976 E. Fifth St. from 5 G’s Realty Co. of Phoenix.
The seller was represented by Andrew Brigham, Bill Bayless, Barry Gabel, Mindy Korth and Mark Dancer of the Phoenix office of CB Richard Ellis. The buyer was represented by Jim McCabe of Realty Executives in Phoenix.
Dispatches from Ireland: Days One through Four
I was sure another cute little beagle would nab me, like the one in Australia on the customs officer’s leash in 2006. That beagle at the airport sniffed my luggage, sat down and turned its eyes to its handler, the cue that I was the bad guy.
How was I to know? I had been misinformed when told that my candy bars and trail mix would be allowed into the nation down under. I was ordered to throw them in the trash.
But on this trip to Ireland, after a quiet flight on Aer Lingus from Chicago to Dublin, there were no beagles sniffing luggage at the airport. My protein bars for between-meals energy were safe.
Construction cranes fill the skyline in Dublin. Traffic is busy. The narrow streets, some marked one way, make the traffic seem busier. Our taxi driver said his country’s economy has some of the same troubles as in the states, including lenders too quick to approve loans for unqualified borrowers, homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, and even some new owners walking away from their down payments.
Many of the street and highway signs are in English and Gaelic. The light rail system in downtown Dublin appears popular. One of its stops is next to St. Stephen’s Green, a central city park that on this day was busy because the sun was shining. Across the street were dozens of parked and chained bicycles, a clear sign that pedal power is a popular transportation option in this busy city.
There were street performers on Grafton Street. A teenager played his violin. A few storefronts away, a man in a muscle shirt played solo hard rock on his electric guitar. Two mimes, one in dressed in silver and the other in gold, went through their routines.
Grafton Street has been for pedestrians only since 1982. It is lined with “four-story Georgian buildings that are home to a mix of familiar international stores and chi-chi local retailers,” according to Lonely Planet Publications’ Dublin City Guide.
Our waiter at dinner our first night is from Portugal. He took a year off from his studies in mathematics to live and work in Ireland. And like foreign visitors we know in the states, he points to our country as a goal for those who dream of furthering their studies and launching their careers.
We were on foot for a couple of days in Dublin. On a Friday night, we found ourselves temporarily lost on our return to the hotel. It was rush hour. Traffic moved slowly, and the occasional driver on the horn. Just like home.
On Saturday, we went back to Grafton Street for breakfast at Bewley’s Café & Restaurant, opened in 1927. Then we walked a short distance in a light rain to Trinity College. Our guide on the campus was a student studying French and German. Later, we boarded a bus for a tour of the city.
Today, Sunday, we took a tour to the Boyne Valley, called the cradle of Irish civilization. Next to the River Boyne, which is swollen with runoff from heavy rains, we took a walking tour of the Knowth burial mounds. They are about 5,000 years old and are decorated with some of the best megalithic art in Europe.
Phoenix business community honors ASU’s Duke Reiter
The business pipeline between Phoenix and Chicago, created generations ago by Windy City retirees wintering in Phoenix, and by the Chicago Cubs training in the Arizona sunshine, has grown a little wider.
Wellington Reiter, the former dean of the College of Design at Arizona State University, pointed out the Chicago-Phoenix pipeline during his reception Aug. 12 in the Phoenix Art Museum’s Great Hall. It was filled with about 300 business leaders and Reiter’s colleagues.
Reiter - his friends call him Duke - was the guest of honor because he is leaving Arizona to become president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He starts Aug. 25.
Reiter, who became the College of Design dean in 2002, is quick to point out that Chicago’s architecture makes it one of the nation’s most unique cities.
“It’s the architectural capital of the United States, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.
Business leaders at the reception praised Reiter for his role in helping ASU President Michael Crow and Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon accelerate downtown redevelopment, including the university’s downtown campus.
Reiter’s “constant communication with the Phoenix downtown groups, letting everyone know that our new downtown was going to be something special with the new ASU campus, and that the light rail was needed and would be profitable, eased the concerns of a population that only understood sprawl,” said Mike Fitz-Gerald, managing director of Colliers International’s Phoenix office.
“The three-headed machine of Mayor Gordon, Dr. Crow and Duke molded an understanding that Phoenix could have and actually needed density, and that downtown was where we should start, has created a new mindset that has made Phoenix a better community,” Fitz-Gerald said.
Others agreed, including Pete Bolton, former senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis‘ Phoenix office. Bolton said Reiter became a major player in helping implement Crow’s vision of “a new American university” that is more accessible to the people.
“To me, I think Duke was probably one of the first ones he (Crow) brought on board who went out and really made that happen,” Bolton said.
“This guy was at every function, and he knew about virtually every new building that was being built out there,” Bolton continues. “And he was available all the time to help any of the local architects on what they thought was ‘good’ design.”
Bolton resigned from CB Richard Ellis in December 2007. He formed The Pete Bolton Co., which specializes in consulting to the commercial real estate industry and in organizational development and teambuilding.
Reiter counted the expanded downtown ASU campus, the establishment of the university’s graduate real estate program, the summer design workshop for disadvantaged students who hope to go to college, “and our focus and intensity on the built environment” as some of the key achievements he and others worked on while he was at ASU.
Reiter said he wasn’t actively looking to leave ASU. In fact, it was while he was overseeing the renovation of his Phoenix home when a headhunter reached out to him.
“I got calls from three or four schools this year, all of which have combinations of art and design programs,” he said.
Reiter said there are many business connections between Phoenix and Chicago. One is noted American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who ultimately designed 21 homes in the Chicago area. He had a home and studio in Oak Park, Ill., a Chicago suburb.
Wright established his winter studio and home, Taliesin West, in the desert northeast of Scottsdale in 1937. Wright died in 1959.
And in recent years, two Chicago-based architects have established sizable and upscale developments in Phoenix and Scottsdale. One is David Hovey, founder of Optima Inc. He designed and built condominium developments called Optima Camel View Village at Scottsdale Road and Goldwater Boulevard; and Optima Biltmore Towers at Camelback Road and 24th Street in Phoenix.
The second Chicago architect making a name for himself in Arizona is David Wallach, principal of W Developments. He designed and built The Summit at Copper Square, a luxury condo building in downtown Phoenix next to Chase Field and US Airways Center.
“There’s a pipeline between these two cities, and it’s pretty wide,” Reiter said.
It’s wide enough for the Chicago Cubs to travel to metro Phoenix almost every spring since 1952. That was the year the team moved its spring training camp to Mesa. The Cubs relocated in 1966 to Long Beach, Calif., then to Scottsdale in 1967 and back to Mesa in 1979, according to the team history.
San Diego group buys central Phoenix apartment property
A private capital group in San Diego is the new owner of a central Phoenix apartment complex across the street from the Phoenix Country Club.
ColRich paid $5.2 million to the seller, Newcastle Investments of Phoenix, for the Executive Plaza Apartments at 550 E. Earll Drive. The garden-style multifamily property is across Seventh Street from the country club.
The apartment complex has 92 units in eight two-story buildings. It is a few blocks east of Central Avenue, where the light rail system is set to open in late December.
The buyer and the seller were represented by Matt Lockin, associate, and by Bobby Bull, managing director of Transwestern’s Investment Services Group.
ColRich plans to renovate the apartments’ interior and exterior, budgeting more than $15,000 per unit. The rents will be increased, and the buyer plans to hold the property for three to five years. At that time, the property would be marketed to another investor or to a buyer interested in future redevelopment.
The two-acre property is zoned for high-rise to about 20 stories.
Newcastle is an investment group with assets in Phoenix and in Europe. ColRich, which buys apartments for conversion into condos, has invested in apartments in Ahwatukee and Chandler.
