Welcome back to our third iteration of Tucson’s changing Urban landscape series one video. One of the series was a sort of foundational video talking about the history of what’s created a lot of this economic change and we talked about some of the very specific projects that were in my opinion changemakers. The second series was really what’s happening in the central Urban core and one of the key lessons there as we talked about the importance of developers really tying to the history and culture of the region. So as they’re developing maintaining names or maintaining structures incorporating pieces of our history as part of our current growth in our future and our future growth as well. Today. We’re going to really focus on the University and Fourth Avenue some of the things that are happening in that area. If you haven’t listened to the other two episodes, I recommend that you do this is a the third in the series and Does stand alone but it’s a little bit more meaningful.

I think if you listen to the other two prior, so let’s head over to the University of Arizona you Arizona the big project that’s happening there. We have a lot of student housing going in and that’s that’s dotting the skylines. They’re not talking too much about that in this presentation, but we’re going to talk about this new structure. This is a combination of The Graduate hotel and the active Apartments the hotel’s going to have a hundred sixty five rooms meeting spaces and some some really high tech areas for conferences and the apartments the collective Apartments will be two hundred and thirty five twenty thirty eight Apartments both we’re going to have roofdeck pools. So I’m not sure which ones which to be honest with you in this in this view, but they kind of work together if you’re trying to place it. This is a view of it from January. Further along now. We’re may hear 2020 much farther along. That’s right next to the Marriott, which itself is undergoing some internal Renovations.

So the university is going to be blessed with two very large facilities. That would be a allow them to attract some nice conventions to the area and do larger larger academic events right on campus. So I would have to imagine that they’re pretty excited about that the project down the road. We’ll see how things shake out with the post pandemic economy. But this is a project that’s been talked about for a while. The owner of this lot is owned it for 20 some years and put together this particular proposal. If you’re trying to place it where here on Speedway and Campbell you got these two apartment buildings here that would come down so that they could build this Speedway Campbell interchange here this when done will be the Eastern sort of Gateway. Into the urban core will be a Transportation Hub because as of now back here on Helen you got the University of banner medical facilities here back on Helen, you’ve got the Eastern Terminus of the streetcar.

So if the streetcar expands it’s probably going to connect to here and you can you can bet that this building will be a central hub for connecting those to the streetcar current route with anything in the future. This area will have have 40,000 square foot of retail there’ll be space set aside for medical potentially a large grocery store right in here office space and housing most likely Apartments. Although condos are a possibility. So we’re going to be keeping an eye on on this particular project. This is it Speedway Campbell as we leave Fourth Avenue, there’s really University and start to head towards 4th Avenue. We’re going to go along University Boulevard if you’re familiar with the area, this is time Market fantastic local market. And this old parking lot is now part of the development called the Trinity. This is the office portion of it and the bottom floor here has been taken over by a collaborative with El Rio and they’ve opened up Health on University.

So it’s a primary care physician facility that is right in the heart of an area where there wasn’t one previously. This is a project called the Trinity. It’s designed by Rob paulus and it’s on the footprint of the Presbyterian. Trinity Presbyterian church, so the church has all of the space. This is the project that is completed with the health on University at the bottom floor. This is time Market. This is the church which will remain currently attached to the church is a school that school is not being used and will come down to create the second portion of the Trinity here. This is going to be more residential and Retail if you were standing right about here on this corner. This is kind of what it would look like with residential here and retail on the bottom. Again. This is this is done. This is not what the developer does have plans to open this area up because currently that’s cool just comes right through here and it creates a barrier. So in speaking with a developer Randy doorman, you can hear that interview on my on my podcast.

I can point that to you at the end of the show here at the end of the series lat. It’s of trees, but they wanted to open this up so that you would have a nice pedestrian connection to the area. So that’s going to be the Trinity and that’s on Fourth Avenue little bit north. So if we head south on 4th, we get to this intersection here at Sixth and fourth. We’ve got the project called the Union on Sixth. This is very interesting for lots of reasons. One of which is it’s a huge project. So when it’s done, this is the Fourth Avenue side when it’s done. And if you were standing over here on this corner, this is what you would see. So you would looking looking back here to the South and to the South and to the West you can see on Fourth Avenue. It’s not too tall. It’s a couple of stories up those retail. It’s going to be in here and some housing definitely gets bigger as you get back towards Fifth. And again, this is a very big footprint.

This would be a view as if you were at the food conspiracy co-op on 4th Avenue and looking here is the corner at 6th and forth and you can see it gets quite large when it gets over to the Fifth Avenue. Side of the project of you from probably January took this off their website. I’m sure they’ve got something updated but you can see this is a massive massive project keeping some of the historic Bungalows that are here. I believe this area was really controversial because they took down a very popular place called most recent iteration was called the flycatcher. It had been a music venue for some time and people were sad to see that go there’s a Concerned people that were in the area that a project of this scale would really kind of change that Bohemian feel of Worth Avenue the the nature of what really makes 4th Avenue popular.

So one of the interesting things that came out of this development was that the neighbors the business owners the landowners the concerned citizens, they got together and they form something called the historic Fourth Avenue Coalition and that Coalition negotiated with the developer Union on sex and they came to an agreement that the Coalition would not object to the development but the developer would give priority to local tenants because they wanted to make sure that if these things were filled that we kept the local businesses in here. So they’re going to give a priority to local businesses. They’re going to cap their their rents for a period of time to keep runs from just escalating so much that one. Other people out of a neighborhood they’re going to invest in public art using local artists and put it in about a hundred thousand dollars back into the area over the next five years to create a more beautiful landscape. So this this community benefits agreement is unique in that it’s the first one in Tucson that might be the first one in the state in which a developer willingly agrees to certain limitations on their development and exchange for cooperation from the neighbors and the businesses around that this is a private agreement.

This is not orchestrated by the government to private parties entering into this agreement. It’s recorded and it stays with the property. So the CBA is a model that there are other parts of Tucson are looking to replicate how can they work together with developers and talking with the members of the historic Fourth Avenue Coalition. They were very clear. They’re not against development. They see development is inevitable. The streetcar itself requires density. We need density to make this. Successful so they were not opposed to development. What they were concerned with was development. That would change the nature of 4th Avenue. We’ve got something very special. They wanted to keep it that way and we appreciate that the developer has worked with them on that. We’ll see how that plays out over the next few years and see if we get more of these Community benefits agreements in place.

So remember this is the footprint if we move down Fourth Avenue project that was completed a couple of years ago. It was one of my favorite down there. It’s called The Box yard. I like it because it was an empty lot and I and and they’ve used these cargo containers to create restaurants and two bars in here. They are this nice rooftop deck. You can see the HUD is over here on Fourth Avenue. So you get a nice little look of Fourth Avenue from here. I like it because it’s an empty lot. They did something creative with it. And on this empty lot was a Vietnamese food truck that Was displaced because of this development but instead of kicking it out kicking them out. What they did is they ain’t they brought them in and Vietnamese food truck became one of these cargo container restaurant. So it’s a good tie in again keeping the history as part of our present and our future across the street from the box yard is a project that does have a lot of people concerned about development on 4th Avenue.

And that’s this Maloney’s Paddy’s the Maloney’s and rack. And this is a project that is underway. Don’t know if it’s got a name yet just referred to it as the Maloney’s Pad. But what you’re likely going to see here is a 13 story structure with 760 beds and 324 rooms. It’s a very big project you got a parking retail and this definitely is going to have an impact on the type of feel on Fourth Avenue. So keeping an eye on this project. If you’re looking at it, you’re just about to go into downtown. This is the historic train depot. And remember just on the other side of this. You’ve got that Ronstadt Center, which is potentially being developed out that’s going to be right over here and they might have that pedestrian bridge that could potentially carry it over the tracks and connect with these warehouses.

So this whole area now, you know, we look at it as downtown or Fourth Avenue, but this whole area really could just become one sort of central Urban spot with different districts. Like this could be the Fourth Avenue District of downtown and this would be the you know, that’s the depot the entertainment section downtown. Anyway, we’ll see how it all plays out. But this is definitely going to change the look and feel of 4th Avenue. So short segment today. If you want more information, you can always head over to the downtown Tucson Partnerships economic blog. I think they do a great job re in a way Lodi. Or as a great place for information about the projects in which they are involved. Their footprint is not University or main gate, so they’re not involved with things that we talked about today, but they do have a huge footprint on the some of the other things that we’re going to talk about in The Next Episode and the stuff we talked about in the last episode and then Tebow AZ dot Biz really good information about Economic Development projects that are planned across the region not just downtown. Or Fourth Avenue, but all of Metropolitan Tucson my my website lifelong the streetcars the radio show that I host every Sunday at 11 a.m. And we have all of those available for rebroadcast hundred thirty seven episodes.

We love for you to learn more about the history and culture of Tucson social economic impacts of things that are happening through downtown radios Life along the streetcar. You can find that at 99.1 FM streaming of Downtown Radio dot org, or you can also head over to our website for more information. And the last one is my business page towns tools for agents. Excuse me. I’m in the mortgage business. I make my living doing that for over 20 years and we do a lot of work with real estate agents and helping them with their marketing and taking these types of presentations and building it into something for for their client. So if you have any interest in working with us in that regard check out Tom’s tools for agents. Dot-com I appreciate you staying with us here for this third video in the series of Tucson’s changing Urban landscape.