22-Story Apartment Tower in Downtown Phoenix will Begin Housing Students Next Year

Article originally posted on AZ Central on March 6, 2023

A redevelopment project in downtown Phoenix aiming to make better use of the transit depot at Central Avenue and Van Buren Street is on track to begin opening for student housing in the fall 2024 semester.

Central Station, which will include two towers, one for student-oriented housing and one that will be traditional apartments, recently reached a construction milestone the developer called “bottoming out,” meaning the underground excavation work to clear a pit for the underground parking lot has been completed.

The milestone is significant, designers of the project said, because the below-grade parking structure will allow the project to be urban and walkable on the ground floor, without visible parking.

“It’s not easy to build below-grade parking, but it is important to create a vibrant, urban environment that is not full of parking,” Krista Shepherd, principal at Multistudio, the designer of the project, said.

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What will be Built at Central Station?

The finished development will require incorporating the bus station, which was temporarily relocated during construction, and the existing light rail lines that border either side of the site. The development will also include 70,000 square feet of office space and ground-floor retail space.

The student housing portion, which will be a 22-story tower with about 240 units, is planned to be open ahead of the 2024 school year, Gary Holloway Jr., CEO of GMH Communities, the developer and operator of the project, said. The student housing tower will be called Anova, a brand that GMH has begun building in several markets around the country.

The student housing will be open to all students, including those at the nearby downtown campus of Arizona State University.

The 32-story apartment tower is planned to open after the student housing portion, Holloway said. Preleasing for units in that tower will begin in late 2024. That tower will also include a workforce housing component, with about 7% of the 360 units designated for workforce housing.

An artist's rendering shows a light rail stop outside the Central Station project, which is under construction in downtown Phoenix.

Holloway said the company is looking for education-related users to rent space in the office portion, and said they already are in discussions with one education-related group to lease some office space, but could not identify the group yet.

The retail portion of the development will be geared toward different uses, which could include restaurants, coffee shops, a grocer or other consumer-oriented businesses, Holloway said.

“We want anything that will complement the residential and the transit,” he said.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said housing experts have said incorporating affordable units in with market-rate housing has proved beneficial for residents of both types and said the integrated approach of the apartments at Central Station aligns with the city’s goals of creating and preserving affordable units.

Central Station’s site along light rail and bus lines made it an ideal place for residential and affordable development, she said, and the continued extension of light rail in Phoenix gives more opportunities for affordable housing that is transit accessible.

“This continues the momentum for transit-oriented development,” she said.

Bringing a plan forward to develop the site took cooperation from federal agencies as well as the state and private sector, because of the transit uses on the site, Gallego said.

“The site is very complex to develop,” she said.

The city had tried to bring the site forward for redevelopment about a decade ago, but the plan was shelved when the chosen developer died. In 2018, the city again released a request for proposals for redeveloping the site and selected the proposal that is now moving forward.

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