Yay for a new tallest! Thank you very much RonnieFoos for obtaining the application for Astra! As a native Phoenician since 1983, this proposal is exciting news and long overdue. A 525 foot tall tower plus a 360 foot tower will have such an impact on our skyline, especially viewed from the west and north.

I was curious to see what the towers may appear with the Phoenix skyline, so I did a quick, not-to-scale and poor rendering using Google Maps and the renderings:

WEST VIEW:
https://i.imgur.com/mlcXOxc.png

NORTH VIEW:
https://i.imgur.com/U6OiERi.png

Let's hope this project gets a fast-track review at the City of Phoenix and gets built soon! :tup:

What a year!
 

Unbelievable year for Phoenix. It’s amazing to think about how just 3-4 years ago we’d get excited and about and track 4-5 story apartment buildings in the core. Now a 17-19 story building seems mundane. I know we all want to see taller buildings, but when you look at how far we’ve come and how quickly it’s happened, it really is amazing. I know other cities are building more, taller, towers, but I doubt many cities have see the % growth in their skyline that we have. Without doing the math, it’d seem to me that we are pretty close to doubling our skyline in the last decade. Certainly we will exceed that in the next 2-3 years.

The new tallest may or may not pan out, but I think the economy and our growth trajectory both continue to be strong. At the very least, 3-4 years from now (if economy holds), we’ll be talking about 30 stories towers routinely. Upward and onward!

My wishlist for 2020:

- breaking ground on The Jefferson (capitalize on TSR Arena remodel and Fry’s)
- more development and first 15+ story tower proposed for warehouse district
- breaking ground on Link Phase 3 (what a dense block that will be)
- breaking ground on the Ro2 tower
- another new brewery downtown
- reviving talks on grand ave street car to spur development west
- continued momentum from Park Central in Midtown with new residential high-rise proposed
- breaking ground on central station

2020 Long Shots:

- Breaking ground on the Indian School and central project
- Breaking ground on Astra

I'm not aware of it being a 2 tower project...although that doesn't mean it isn't. It would make sense of the "Duo" name that has been thrown around on some of the pre-apps. But again, I have no verification of this. If anyone can verify this is a 2 building development, that would be great!





Love that you did this! I used to make these when there were proposed towers in Cincinnati. I think the perspective is pretty close, but Astra will be a little taller (Astra is shown to be 532'9" in the pre-app). You think you could squeeze X and Aspire in those renderings too? ;)


Edit: With the tower being proposed at 532'9'' + another 8' or so for the mechanical equipment on the roof, I wonder how the FAA is going to weigh in on this? I think the Downtown heights are nearly 100' too short as set by the FAA as it is. I hope they don't have too much of a problem with an additional 15' or so on the height of Astra.

Yeah anyone want to mock up everything so we can see what its going to be like in a few years?

Also, the FAA heights while limiting only limit us to about 60 floors and thats at the southern end of downtown, the heights go up as you get closer to McDowell

Its not THAT limiting.

That's not correct. 60 floors would be about 700'. No way in heck the FAA allows that anywhere in Downtown. The max height goes up to about 600' as you go out to 7th Ave. Where Astra is proposed is a 525' FAA height limit (which is why Aspirant has said they are going the max height for the lot). Here's the FAA height limit map for Downtown: https://www.skyharbor.com/docs/defau...rsn=de938588_0

What's the exact elevation of the lot? Subtract that from 1625 and that's the height limit for astra.

10 foot per floor 600 foot lmits...I mean I dont think I was that far off but okay

Sorry we max out at 54 floors.

Well, you can't go by floor count when determining building height. Floors plates can range from 8' to 15'. For instance, Aspire is at 17 floors and 240'. If it were to go 60 floors at the current floor spacing, that would be well over 800' (not even counting the parapet/mechanical equipment). Downtown maxes out out at 600' along 7th Ave. This has been talked about many, many times. The FAA height limits have not changed for DT Phoenix and the limits will probably never be raised since the FAA has been battling for LOWER limits for many cities.

Midtown is another story and if we ever see anything over 600', it will be in Midtown and not Downtown. Sorry to be a downer, but this is the state of height limits in Phoenix which is why I stated I think Downtown's height limit is 100' lower than it should be. San Diego gets away with a 500' limit in MUCH closer proximity to flight paths, and I don't even want to get started on Vegas which has a 735' building and a 1100' observation tower. But I digress.

https://www.skyharbor.com/docs/defau...rsn=de938588_0

Here is the Current zoning. The downtown elevation is 1,086 feet. Once you get north of Fillmore height restrictions get less severe.

There is no reason we cant have many buildings pushing 50 or 60 floors right in the downtown core, How tall is Chase? 44? The FAA height limits are not the reason we haven't had a new building over 30 stories in 50 years.

You just posted the same FAA height map that I posted. :shrug:

Your arguing something that is making no sense to me. Your still specifying building height by floor count and not in feet which is what the FAA is going to look at when looking at building height. They could care less if a building is 50 floors or 20 floors. What they look at is if it exceeds the max height IN FEET over MSL, not by floor count. I.E., Chase is 483' which is only 17' from the max height of that block which is 500' above MSL. With the antennae on top of Chase, that pretty much brings the total to 500'. It would not be allowed to go any taller than that.

Anywhere North of Fillmore would be a higher limit by the FAA, but a 255' limit has been set by the City of Phoenix which is why nothing is proposed taller than that between Fillmore and Hance Park (with Link being an exception). The developers of Garfield House even stated they would be asking for a variance from the City to go to the proposed height of 285' on a lot that has a 255' limit.

Best case IMHO is that downtown starts to add 30-35 story towers and begins to creep south to warehouse district (but 15-25 stories), west towards the capital (25-30 stories), northwest down Grand (15-20 stories), and north into midtown 35-45 stories). That would truly create a city feel rather than the small patches we have now, we’d have more of a 24/7 hub. Obviously the I-10 is the biggest threat to that vision. I hope more can be done to bridge the gap between Roosevelt and Midtown.

Hey RonnieFoos! No problem and thanks! I can try to add Aspire and X into the two renderings. I know colored elevations are online somewhere but do you by any chance have color elevation renderings of both X and Aspire handy somewhere? I’ll then add in the two buildings to the renderings. I forgot what X is called now.

The space is definitely there for this. Hopefully light rail extensions south and west help spur growth in those directions.

How well would the area receive development up Grand? It seems a lot of the art scene has started moving up Grand and I think there could be a lot of push-back as residents start thinking Grand as the next target after RoRo has been developed. I myself think it would be awesome to see some height moving up Grand as it would break up the monotony of the skyline going in a straight North/South line.

I think maybe a Mill Ave type approach would work where elevations on Grand stay low and residential towers are added off of the actual avenue. Would help spur more businesses on Grand by building in some local population.

So can anyone confirm that this is a legitimate possibility? I personally feel that 500+ is the critical mark for Phoenix so this is *very* exciting. San Diego doesn't have a 500+ tower and for Phoenix to get one is HUGE. 500' is not tall in the grand scheme (the world) but it's tall for Phoenix...so i don't want to get my hopes up but detail in the renderings tells me this is serious and likely...can anyone confirm? There is ZERO reason that Phoenix doesn't have a 700' in mid-town now but I think it will happen in the next 10 years. For me, the diff between a 700 footer and a 1,200 footer is very little when you're on the ground. This gets us much closer to that 700 or 800 footer...

Remember that the Central Park (Indian School and Central) proposal includes two 355’ towers. I think it will not happen in its current proposed state BUT if it did it would go along way towards the vision we are kinda talking about of more height in new midtown development.

Whoa. Slow down there sparky, lol!!

Astra is a very real possibility. We have a very detailed pre-app and we have confirmation from another forumer that has 1st-hand knowledge straight from the developer that they are just waiting on Phoenix to approve a few things. Also, with the developer being Aspirant (whom have already completed Stewart and have started with Aspire) have proven they are serious. If built, it will pretty much be built as shown in the pre-app unless there are major issues with local residents, safety issues or simply not meeting Phoenix development standards. But I think Aspirant has probably learned a few things on what Phoenix expects and probably have gotten quite good at what they are proposing.

Completely agree on this. Once you start breaking a certain height, it all just looks big from ground level. Anything over 700' for me is big. Heck, I'm even happy with 600' when looking upwards! I still think it will be some time before we break the 600' mark though. In the meantime, I am happy if we finally get our first "skyscraper" with Astra. Hopefully more will come.

Can someone figure out and post the elevation of that exact lot? I could if i were on my work computer with Google earth, but i'm not.

I'd imagine the height they're proposing fits the faa height limit perfectly, but it would be good to confirm. I can't imagine they would get a variance to go higher.