I hope you're right. In related news, the deli at Park Central is closing:

https://scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...3c&oe=5A6BA9B8

OK. That's actually pretty clever...:yes:

It took me a while to dig up, but I believe this was one of the original renderings for Collier's:

https://s1.postimg.org/22imsje3cf/Colliers.png

I would've been OK with this if they redesigned the base. It has a modern-deco look.

All I can saw is wow. We can easily have 6-7 towers under construction in the next 13 months. All of the demand for new retail and local jobs that is going to generate! We have been waiting for the moment here for years. It's finally here. This is the tipping point. Downtown will be unrecognizable in 5 years.

Exactly. The demand isn't there for a megaproject (fingers crossed for Amazon's HQ2) with a lot of high-rise product.

I'd be happy with a mid-rise apartment building to go up to get the ball rolling tho. I wonder if condomania will ever come back...

IMHO, Phoenix killed any hope of landing HQ2 by choosing this as the site. Amazon wants a quick airport access route...and this isn't it. It's 7 minutes in any direction to even get on the freeway and that's in good traffic. I know this because I work right across the street. Also, access from Thomas to Central provides even more of an obstacle as you can't freaking turn left onto Central. So getting there quickly from I-17 is out unless you want to navigate the side streets.

I consider being 15-20 minutes from the airport a "pretty quick airport route".

But I don't disagree with your assertion Phoenix won't get Amazon HQ.

https://azbigmedia.com/optima-kierla...tower-75-sold/

Some evidence that the market is still doing well Optima Keirland is 75% sold.

A mining company is moving it's headquarters to phoenix. downtown.


https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/...arters-in.html

Biomed
 

I emailed the reporter from yesterday about the rest of the revealed Biomed Campus plan:

Just a damn shame that can't build these as multi-use towers with housing and labs. I get that they don't want the initial outlay of investing in a tower when they can scale their investment with shorter buildings, but this just plain sucks. At least if they'd split those lots in half and allow for a private developer to purchase or lease the land to help fund denser/taller labs it would be a total buzz kill.

As somebody who went to the meeting the other day the plant gets taller as it goes south which I think is a good plan to transition from Roosevelt/Garfield up to 10 floors across from the UofA building.

I also like the idea of the pocket parks and new street trees. Also keep in mind that ASU and UofA are fully invested for the long run in this downtown Bio-med plan meaning the future of higher developments is always there, also expanding Across 7th street and the block with the shitty Holiday Inn (which I thought was going to be replaced with a new Holiday in off of 10th ave but I haven't heard anything on that in a while)

I Actually hope that the Biomed acts as a border for downtown so more Highrise development goes on in the core and in between Roosevelt/downtown and around the Park. There is a lot of empty lots and gross buildings that need to get replaced in that area and with these lots off the table its more likely they will.

Would love for them to include some restaurant space in these buildings.

I'm trying to think of any buildings in other cities that mix housing and labs. I don't think it would be a good combination. Most labs house toxic chemicals and/or radioactive materials that require special handling. Most labs conduct animal research, which makes some people uncomfortable and sometimes draws protests.

In general, I like mixed use when it means ground floor retail with offices or residences above. In some cases, though, a particular building needs to be dedicated to a particular function, and a more realistic aim is to have mixed uses within the same block or neighborhood rather than within the same building.

There is at least one in the first phase

Sorry, the irony of the last response about mixing labs and housing being toxic, but now we are mixing food and labs. :haha:

I'm sure it's probably very expensive to do it safely. A better approach is probably splitting the lots for residential and lab in separate building, driving increased density for both while generating funding to support the additional cost of density for the labs.

If they don't get it, which they probably won't, this won't be the reason. Have you ever been to Seattle to see their nightmare traffic? They would be ecstatic to have a 15 minute drive to the airport.

It doesn't really matter where you are in phoenix the airport is in a super central location.

Most cities don't have the airport right in the middle of everything.