Yes, Meow Wolf. Last I remember no one really knows if Meow Wolf is still happening somewhere else, but this is apparently replacing Meow Wolf for this lot. It's a ~22 story student-oriented residential tower.

Here's some good news about downtown bank offices:

https://www.cpexecutive.com/post/wes...ixs-cityscape/

A bit of development near Desert Sky Mall. This might actually create more of a destination around the terminus if light rail is eventually extended to there:

https://azbigmedia.com/real-estate/m...sert-sky-mall/

Macerich stuffed that mall full of businesses and services for the working-class mexican population around there and (at least on my last visit) it's doing great. They've done a great job adapting to the changing mall usage.

does this go here?

https://www.azcentral.com/story/ente...ct/6720914002/

We've got an East Valley thread. Maybe it'll get moved there. Exciting news nonetheless.

Not afraid of the big bad wolf, go ahead and swipe their lot! I'm OK with it. Plenty of land to go around still. Let them find another lot if/when they are serious.

I agree. It's a business and if you can't make a commitment and execute in a reasonable time I'll find someone who will. And don't start on price. If you were willing to pay it tht means so were others. We're done now.

Santa Fe isn't all that far, and Meow Wolf is still opening in Las Vegas. I would have loved to have it here, but I'm okay with traveling for the experience.

I wouldn't mind Meow Wolf or Atari being built north of RoRo. Close to Cambria and Pemberton. There's so much space there. True North has these amazing ideas, but they seem to never come to fruition.

I never understood how Meow Wolf was going to program its space. They were talking about 75,000 square feet of exhibition space on a 21,000 square foot lot with another 400 rooms. Just didn't seem to pencil out with the small size and height and density limits.

Atari felt like it was under similar space constraints--the concept in Las Vegas actually makes sense because the floor space is contiguous.

It almost feels like they were just using the Phoenix lots to hype up the concepts for developments elsewhere.

I hope both still happen. It will be interesting to see once things start slowly getting back to normal and downtown really gets to experience the population growth and demand for entertainment. Atari would be more interesting to me. Meow Wolf is a little more confusing.

I asked about the Central Station project during the Downtown Voices Coalition meeting this morning. The answer I heard was that the project is still going forward. One of the reasons for the appearance of a delay in construction is that Valley Metro wanted to shutter the station and relocate the bus stops at the same time that it makes its semi-annual service changes. Those occur each year in October and April, so October 2020 was the time to make bus routing adjustments prior to an early 2021 start.

Thanks! Any other updates? Didn’t get an opportunity to attend. I know the paseo alignment and future downtown plan updates was an agenda topic that was of interest.

Someone was asking about that mini-park on the corner of 2nd and Roosevelt going to fallow.

Hubbard Street Group, the company behind Skye Phoenix on 6th and Garfield, bought the north parcel in January. That is a *very* good sign imho for a project there to move forward.

There was a lot of discussion about those topics, but not much concrete in terms of plans. Another interesting topic was why the 5th & 3rd Avenue cycle track construction has been delayed. Apparently, Streets is citing the weather.

So basically it's Valley/Metro holding up the project not the developer?

I didn't understand it that way. Instead, what I was told was that Valley Metro moved out in October 2020 before the developer was ready to move in. If Valley Metro had waited until its next batch of service changes in April 2021, that might have delayed the development. It will therefore be interesting to see if we actually have a groundbreaking before April ends.

I'm reading the above as Central Station was torn down to limit liability and not be an "attractive nuisance" or otherwise an abandoned lot that just opens the property owner (eg, the County/Phoenix/RPTA/MAG) to get sued by some trespasser or otherwise cause some civic blight action.

The Pappas school was bladed as soon as it was vacated even tho those buildings could have been used by ASU or anyone else in the meantime until their redevelopment. I assume some overtly-careful, box-thinking risk management team said get it out of the ground before anything happens.

Central Station hasn’t been torn down yet. It’s just behind a fence. Agree about the Pappas School, though.