U-Haul buys CenturyLink Tower in midtown Phoenix for its new headquarters

Article originally posted on AZ Central on December 6, 2024

Phoenix-based U-Haul purchased the former CenturyLink Tower in midtown Phoenix for its new headquarters, only one block from its current campus.

The 25-story high-rise, located at 20 E. Thomas Road, is the tallest building in midtown, reaching 397 feet tall, and includes nearly 550,000 square feet of office space. It was built in 1989 and will be renamed the U-Haul Tower after the purchase.

U-Haul will pay $23.7 million for the tower.

U-Haul expects the sale to close on Friday.

The building will be the headquarters for U-Haul International and other subsidiaries.

U-Haul was founded by L.S. Shoen and Anna Mary Carty Shoen in 1945 in Ridgefield, Wash.

The company has been headquartered in midtown Phoenix since 1967, when the Shoen family moved to Arizona. U-Haul has owned the Central Towers, located at 2727 N. Central Ave., for the past 57 years, and has expanded extensively in the area to several properties nearby. In 2021, the company opened the Shoen Family Conference and Fitness Center, a corporate wellness facility on the campus.

Joe Shoen, chairman of the company, said they had been looking to buy a new building and expand for about six or seven years. The company had outgrown the towers and had purchased other buildings to accommodate growth, he said. With the new building, the company can consolidate its footprint.

Right now, there aren’t any immediate plans to sell its existing office buildings, but it could happen in the future, he said. The company owns two office buildings that front Third Street and could be sellable if the office market improves.

The twin 11-story Central Towers will likely be the last to be vacated, because they include a lot of the company’s IT infrastructure. The company will gradually move to the new building over the next two years.

“I don’t see any big sale immediately coming up,” he said, adding that the company’s tendency is to hold on to real estate.

U-Haul will keep the Shoen Family Conference and Fitness Center even after moving to the new building. It will also keep its Tempe facility, which serves a manufacturing, fabrication and repair space.

The company has about 1,600 employees based at the midtown headquarters. Shoen said there is not a specific target for increase in head count, but said the company will continue to hire as needed and has room to grow in the new tower.

Many of U-Haul’s employees have spent years with the company and have planned their lives around being close to their office in midtown, so buying a building nearby made sense, Shoen said.

The new U-Haul Tower does have some tenants leasing space who will remain in their offices after the sale, Shoen said. But as leases expire, he said it was likely U-Haul eventually would use the full building.

Across North America, U-Haul has about 34,000 employees. It ranks 52nd on The Republic 100 list of Arizona’s largest employers.

Shoen said expanding in midtown gives U-Haul an opportunity to be part of an exciting growth area of Phoenix, pointing out the new Creighton University Health Sciences Campus at Park Central, which has undergone a major redevelopment in the past five years.

“Even though offices are dead players right now, midtown’s not a dead player,” he said. “We want to be part of the growth over the next decades.”