The new block in town features office/showroom‑warehouse

by RaeAnne Marsh

More office warehouse building is in progress in the area around the Deer Valley Airport, with 162,954 square feet slated to be available in the Alameda Business Park by the end of first quarter 2007. But first the streets must go in. That’s how hot the new growth is in this exploding area.

While the city of Phoenix continues its expansion of 19th Avenue, Panattoni Development Company is putting in the first pavement on Alameda Road where that street strikes west from 19th. According to Robert Long, Phoenix senior development manager for the Sacramento‑based company, ground breaks this month on the roadway, curbs and gutters on this street at the project’s southern edge. “And we have to put in 20th Drive,” he adds, referring to the street that will run along the project’s western border.

Thirty‑five acres in total, the parcel of land will eventually hold 20 buildings in a campus‑style commercial park. Phase I, on approximately one‑third of the property, will hold ten of them. It is a rectangular section of the land parcel, oriented north‑south, with a narrow side on Alameda and a long side on 20th Drive. Another street, now planned to end in a cul‑de‑sac, will eventually be constructed on Phase I’s long eastern side, bisecting the major portion of the acreage.

Site design shows buildings lined up facing outward from Phase I’s center axis and situated to face back‑to‑back across the storage yards separating them. These yards, fenced as part of the building to be occupied, will afford private storage to the individual business, and all but the two largest will offer grade‑level truck well capability. The yards are one of the project’s key attributes, and Brent Gordon, marketing associate with Colliers Classic, the company marketing the project, notes, “The fenced yards make it attractive especially because Deer Valley land is so expensive now.” Yards for the two paired buildings at the north and south ends of the project will be 6,000 square feet; the other yards will be 6,200 square feet and 12,400 square feet, commensurate with the building to which they’re attached.

The stand‑alone buildings will be of various sizes, and, while all will be office‑warehouses, the ratio of office space to warehouse space will differ among them. Buildings A and B lie closest to Alameda. The first, at 13,181 square feet, will be 60 percent office; the second, at 11,782 square feet, 90 percent office.

North of the first two, a large Building C (32,008 square feet of which 3,000 is mezzanine) will back to a side‑by‑side pair (Buildings D and E) at 12,253 square feet each. The smaller two will be 20 percent office; the larger one, 35 percent. Moving north again, this arrangement is repeated with Buildings F, G and H. The two buildings furthest from Alameda Road, Buildings I and J–with the same square footage as Buildings A and B–will be, respectively, 10 percent and 20 percent office. The footprint is not the only thing to set Buildings C and F apart from the others in the campus; clear height in these two buildings, at 24 feet, will be six feet higher than that of the smaller buildings.

The number of parking spaces with the buildings is likewise planned to be greater at the front of the project. Buildings A and B will have 37 and 36 spaces, respectively, while the other small buildings will have 18; Building I, with the smallest percentage of office to total building space, will have 16. The two larger buildings will have 58. A single driveway off Alameda, at the front of the project, will feed into a drive that will run along the two long sides of the project, with navigation allowed east‑west between the buildings where most of the parking will also be located. There will be an additional row of parking in front of Buildings C and F, facing 20th Drive. Three driveways are planned to enter the site from the side.

Design of the buildings at Alameda Business Park emphasizes straightforward, clean lines. Panattoni’s Long describes the buildings as not just office‑warehouse but office/showroom- warehouse and says, “There’s the availability to have some retail.” A zig‑zag at the corner will mark the building entrance, where the windows will also be concentrated. A metal awning on the block construction will add visual interest, extending around corners far enough to also shade the windows to the side of the entrance.

Panattoni has been working on the site design since last November, although escrow did not close on the property until this past March. Says Long, “We wanted to get started as soon as we closed escrow.” Ground‑breaking on the building construction is expected to take place in Fourth Quarter 2006, following work on the off‑site improvements.

Long points out such positive factors as proximity the freeways and airport and the area’s residential demographics in explaining his company’s interest in the location, and notes the similarity of this Northwest Airpark to the high‑value Scottsdale Airpark. “We expect this to track closely to supporting the construction side of the residential [growth] as well as supporting businesses that would support those residences.” Businesses he expects to be attracted to Alameda Business Park include swimming pool supply companies, smaller distributors and light manufacturing.

Alameda Business Park is being marketed, for sale or lease, by Bob Lundstedt, Darren Tappen, Mike Kane and Brent Gordon of Colliers Classic, who may be reached at (480) 655‑3326.