20-story student housing development proposed near ASU in Tempe

Article originally posted on AZ Central on December 3, 2024

A gas station and retail center across the street from Arizona State University in Tempe could be redeveloped into a 20-story student housing development with two towers.

The project, called Leo Tempe, proposes two 20-story towers and a 10-story parking garage on a 3.7-acre site on the southeast corner of Rural Road and University Drive. The site includes a Chevron station, several restaurants, a tattoo shop and a strip retail center, all of which would be razed to develop the new building on the site.

Nick Wood, an attorney with Snell & Wilmer, who is representing the developer of the project in the zoning case, said his client, Chicago-based Up Campus Student Living, is under contract to buy the site. The sale is contingent on the rezoning case. According to city documents, four different landowners own pieces of the site, so Up Campus Student Living will have to buy each piece from different owners.

The site is along the railroad right-of-way, Wood said, an area that the city wants to make into a pedestrian pathway. The proposal for the development includes wide sidewalks with landscaping for pedestrians to make the walk more shaded and pleasant, he said.

Each tower and the parking garage would have a rooftop amenity deck. Amenities at the development will include two pools, a jogging track and sports courts. The towers in total would include 950 units ranging from studios to four bedrooms, adding up to 2,391 bedrooms. The units would be leased by the bedroom, not by the unit, and renters would share the common space, such as the living room and kitchen.

The ground floor would have 15,000 square feet of commercial space, in addition to about 10,000 square feet of patio space Wood said, which could be all restaurants.

Three of the plaza’s existing tenants, including Gus’ New York Pizza, the pizza restaurant located there, have expressed interest in keeping locations at the new development, Wood said at a Tempe City Council meeting in November.

At the meeting, Councilmember Jennifer Adams said she was glad to see traffic improvements, including a new stoplight, proposed in the project. Adams said the intersection was too busy now to have a gas station on the site, so removing the gas station in the redevelopment would improve safety.

The site is just west of another proposed apartment building, which is planned to include two towers, the tallest reaching 18 stories. That project is planned by Scottsdale-based Aspirant Development a division of Empire Group. The Tempe City Council approved that project in late 2023.