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 One
Phoenix
by AI-BSR
Description: The vacant
lot across the street from the Phoenix Art Museum - One Phoenix.
Three towers, each 34 stories tall,
will connect downtown with midtown Phoenix. The developers say there
will be 900 luxury condos with retail, including a high-end grocery
store, on the ground floor.
Prices will start at $500,000 and range
in size from 800 to 2000 square feet. Construction is expected to
begin in 2008 and with an estimated completion of 2012.
NEWS: This story first
appeared in the Phoenix Business Journal, October 5, 2007.
The Phoenix housing market
remains sluggish, but an Israeli company is fast-tracking a proposal
for three 34-story condominium towers at Central Avenue and McDowell
Road.
The developer is gambling that the Valley's housing market will
regain its strength in the three years it will take to complete the
first building.
The $385 million project, called One Phoenix, includes more than 900
luxury residences. Work on the 6-acre site at the northwest corner
of the intersection could start in 2008.
Tentative pricing for the condos starts at about $500,000, with unit
sizes ranging from 800 to more than 2,000 square feet. Retail
tenants, including a high-end grocer, are planned on the ground
floor.
Zoning attorney Nick Wood and Yon Minei, vice president of AI-BSR
LLC, have been presenting the proposal to nearby homeowners in
recent weeks.
AI-BSR is a partnership between BSR Group and Africa Israel
Investments Ltd., formed specifically to build One Phoenix. Minei
moved to Phoenix from Jerusalem a few weeks ago to manage the
project. He said he expects to live in Phoenix "for the next six
years, during construction."
The property's existing zoning allows a maximum height of 250 feet
and up to 1,200 residences. The developer is seeking a variance for
a height of 375 feet, said Wood, who practices with the Phoenix law
office of Snell & Wilmer LLP.
The proposed height is comparable to the nearby Viad Tower, 1850 N.
Central Ave. But each of the One Phoenix residential towers will be
thinner and have a smaller "footprint" than the Viad building.
The One Phoenix proposal was approved in late September by the Willo
Neighborhood Association and Oct. 1 by the Encanto Village Planning
Committee. It goes to the Phoenix Planning and Zoning Committee in
November and to the City Council in early December.
Ruth Ann Marston, a member of the Encanto Planning Committee, lives
a few blocks north of the site. She made the motion Oct. 1 for her
committee to approve the proposal.
"Clearly, this is a corner that has to have a dense, high-rise
project," she said.
Marston has lived in her central Phoenix home for about 40 years.
She said the developer's pledge to include a high-end grocery store
in One Phoenix "is going to improve home values and the quality of
life" for nearby homeowners.
Kalman Sufrin, chief executive of BSR Group, said his advisers
disagree on when to start work. Some recommend marketing the condos
this winter, when the region's population swells with visitors and
vacationers. Others favor waiting 12 months for the housing market
to regain some of its momentum.
Although One Phoenix is just the latest in a string of Valley condo
proposals dating back several years, there is no glut in the condo
market. That's because many condo plans never made it past the
conceptual stage, said Jay Butler, director of Realty Studies at
Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus.
While many proposed condos remain unbuilt, Butler said, several
others are under construction or have been completed in Phoenix,
Tempe and Scottsdale.
"Most of this stuff is really talk, more than action. But we're
beginning to see a bunch of projects coming on line," he said.
"Right now, they seem to be doing OK."
He said as long as the remaining units proposed don't all start at
the same time, there will be no glut. "But once you come out of the
dirt, you're committed," he said.
Sufrin said he is committed to One Phoenix. The only variable is the
local housing market.
"We are not selling spreadsheets and projected ideas," he said. "You
can go and touch buildings that we build."
Sufrin is setting up shop in Phoenix because of the region's steady
population and employment growth over several years. It is only a
matter of time, he said, before the housing market rebounds.
He said he is scouting the Valley for sites to build office
buildings, too.
The One Phoenix site is next to the city's light rail line, which is
under construction. It is halfway between downtown -- with its
office buildings, city and county buildings, and more than $3
billion in new projects -- and the many midtown office buildings on
north Central Avenue. The property also is close to Interstates 10
and 17.
BSR Group began working in the United States in 2002. It is
developing high-rise residential projects in Philadelphia and Las
Vegas, with others proposed in Fort Myers and St. Petersburg, Fla.
The architect for One Phoenix is Kobi Karp Architecture & Interior
Design out of Miami.
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