Downtown Tucsonan - January 2008 - (Page 11)

Vital Signs experienced person to talk about commercial properties in downtown tucson. He shared his perspective with the Downtown Tucsonan. “tucson is a city of about 1 million people; our office market for a city of 1 million is relatively small because of the kinds of jobs that we have. we don’t have regional headquarters and we don’t have national headquarters. what we have are a lot of local service businesses, warehouses, and distributional centers, and lots of retail. the last big multi-tenant office complex sold was the unisource tower. and the only new office building built since 1986 was the (Evo deconcini) Federal court Building and that is not a multi-tenant office,” Isaacson said. “what is more compelling is that in the last 20 years the downtown office market has gotten smaller rather than bigger. this is because the government keeps buying the buildings and filling them with government employees. Most of the displaced office workers have left the downtown. when I started doing business downtown 23 years ago, 39% was private office space — today it’s 13%. the inventory has shrunk while the market has grown. I can’t remember the last time we had a new office user move into downtown tucson from out of town, but we play musical chairs, moving around local entities. I’ve done business downtown for 23 or 24 years and there’s never been more than a couple for-sale houses on the market. Most of the owners in downtown are long-term holders, waiting for the market to improve. there’s very little turnover.” “If you go to Milwaukee, Kansas city or san Francisco, they have hundreds and hundreds of warehouses and factories on the water just waiting to rehab for live/work space, art galleries or funky retail. we have practically none. we don’t have hundreds of interesting old buildings. the only inquiries that we get are from investors, people who heard about Rio nuevo and are interested in opportunities. they would like to buy an interesting building for $25 a square foot and renovate it; something like an old 250,000-square-foot art deco bank building but such a model does not exist in tucson.” “we love downtown but it’s not a dynamic, growing market. I think a successful downtown is about jobs. Residential is great but if you look at the Bank of america Building, we just lost 300 people and nobody said anything about it. Many of them were well-paid private sector jobs, professionals who have been working downtown for a number of years. we’re waiting for the Post loft multi-use project to be completed. It’s lovely but those 60 units or so will bring maybe 90 people downtown. I think that the housing sector is getting disproportionate attention; I think there should be more attention to jobs,” Isaacson concluded. christy Martin of studio Encanto, a local interior design firm, has a client list that reads like the “who’s who” in tucson, but she prefers to keep it private. the exception is Linda Ronstadt, whose home was featured in Architectural Digest. christy currently works out of a 6,100-square-foot warehouse/studio in the Lost Barrio district, but she has been looking for some interesting space in the downtown area for about two years. she would consider sharing space with her friend Bea Mason of Lewis Framing but the right building has not presented itself. at first she focused on the new Mercado district but the timing didn’t work out. Later she found a historic building that had a mold problem. “when I look on the website, there are a lot of properties out there for more than $20.00 a square foot that still have a lot of work that need to be done.” after two years of frustration, christy and Bea are looking at space around dove Mountain. Perhaps Jeff diGregorio sums it up best. “while there may be interesting spaces available, some local businesses may feel intimidated by the city’s requirements. For example, zoning ordinances or building setback and parking space requirement that don’t work for historic structures. However, that is in the past.” He cited recent flexibilities enacted by the city, such as site-specific overlays that exempt certain structures from archaic requirements for setback, parking spaces, and aesthetics. diGregorio and his partner chuck Bressi own the Royal Elizabeth on scott avenue, reported by USA Today as one of the top five urban B & B’s in the nation for business travelers. Jeff is chairman of the Iron Horse neighborhood association and chuck is a major player in the armory Park neighborhood association. From their standpoint the future of downtown tucson looks bright. january.08. downtown tucsonan 11 http://www.bohemiatucson.com http://www.bohemiatucson.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Downtown Tucsonan - January 2008

Downtown Tucsonan - January 2008 Contents From the Editor Downtown Lowdown Vital Signs Downtown Restaurants & Cafes Downtown Live Arts Galleries Performance Film Events Museums Historic Downtown Billboard Classifieds

Downtown Tucsonan - January 2008

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