Roszak/ADC
Fiesta Towers
Phoenix Magazine
02/15/2006
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For years, Mesa has been like the lonely girl at the high school [prom – plenty of potential under the taffeta, just no one to recognize it and twirl her onto the dance floor.
But if the ambitious develops and city planners involved with revitalizing the area in between the Tempe canal, extension drive, the superstition freeway and southern avenue, a.k.a. the “fiesta district,” are successful, the city that long been shrouded in dowdy gown may soon have her shinning moment under the disco ball.
“It is simple economics,’ says Thomas Roszak, president of Roszak/ADC, the lead architect for the fiesta towers, a new condominium development scheduled to break ground just east of fiesta mall later this year. “Right now there is no condo kind of product available, and there are over 120,000 people in terms of the local employment in and around that area that would be eligible, including (those in the city) technology, manufacturing and service industries.
The project, which is currently a dirt lot across from the Best Buy on Grove Avenue and Westwood, will consist of two 20-story high-rise buildings (with the potential to go up to 25 stories) and two 10-story buildings. The buildings will house between 450 and 850 units, ranging from $200,000 for 600 square feet to $700,000 for 1,735 square feet.
Like many successful condo developments across the Valley, Roszak hopes to create amenities that will convert the area around it into a work/live/shop space. The project will include 45,000 square feet of retail space for restaurants, a health club and an upscale gourmet market.
We’re going to identify users exactly so it’s a destination (where) you can go down the elevator and have the things you need,” Roszak says.
Around the same time the first residents all be unpacking their bags, renovations will be wrapping up at Westcor’s newly acquired fiesta mall across the way. At press time, specific plans for the mall had not yet been released, but there is talk of a new movie theatre and according to Roszak, $150 million in renovations.
This notion of a “cool” Mesa is hard to grasp for local residents like Erin Ralston, 17, who works as a manager at the Cost Plus World Market across the street from the new condo site. Ralston, who currently lives in a condo on the chandler-mesa border, was reluctant to even discuss her mesa connection.
“I don’t even like to tell people I work in mesa,” she says. “When I need to go out to dinner or do real shopping, I definitely leave the mesa area. She adds that in order for her to even consider living in mesa, there would have to be changes citywide, not just in the fiesta district.
“You drive two miles north or two miles east and it’s just so bad – really run down,” she says.
But for those who have a hand in mesa’s future, like terry Kilgore, the city’s potential is a lot clearer. Kilgore is the fiesta district’s economic development program manager and the woman in charge of working with the businesses that want to come to mesa.
She says she’s optimistic that the condos will bring change to mesa, and is even considering moving to the area after development is complete.
“For me, coming from outside the area, I’m defiantly seeing the potential,” says Kilgore, who opted for the more urban living of Tempe when she moved to Arizona. “I think for the people who have lived here for so long, they kind of have an idea stuck in their head (that mesa is not a great place to live).”
Which begs the question: will mesa finally be able to shake her reputation and pull up a chair at the popular table?
“I don’t know that mesa will ever not be known for being a sort of bedroom community,” Kilgore says. “But at least we’ll be able to broaden the options.”
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