Ground Broken for Downtown Phoenix Student Housing

EdR and Concord Eastridge have inked a deal to develop a $52 million student housing property adjacent to the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, which includes the University of Arizona School of Medicine and the College of Pharmacy.

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Phoenix—EdR and Concord Eastridge have inked a deal to develop a $52 million student housing property adjacent to the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, which includes the University of Arizona School of Medicine and the College of Pharmacy. The property will also be three blocks from Arizona State University’s downtown campus, which includes the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation, and will be home to the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, which is planning to move there.

Concord Eastridge is building the 326-unit, 609-bed property and will own part of it upon completion, while EdR will be its majority owner and manager when it’s completed in the summer of 2013. Amenities will include two clubhouses, tanning and fitness facilities, swimming pools, study lounges, computer labs and a five-story parking garage with more than 400 spaces. One of the residential buildings will offer 7,500 square feet of retail space at the street level.

“Construction financing is still difficult to obtain for all but the strongest entities,” Josh Wilson, vice president of real estate development at EdR and the lead developer on the Phoenix project, tells MHN. “Still, because of our capital structure and balance-sheet metrics, lenders remain confident in our purpose-built, collegiate housing developments.”

Demand for student housing is going to be strong in that part of downtown Phoenix, according to EdR. In 2010, ASU’s downtown campus and the biomedical campus combined enrollment exceeded 10,000. Considering the enrollment growth the downtown campus has experienced every year since its 2006 opening, its student population is expected to reach 16,000 by 2020.

The biomedical campus is also home of the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the International Genomic Consortium. Planning has also begun for a 350,000-square-foot medical office building on the campus.

You May Also Like