CityScape may have celebrated its official grand opening earlier this month, but another shopping complex in downtown Phoenix is on the market and looking for a buyer.
The older Arizona Center is for sale from its current owner, national shopping-centers owner General Growth Properties.
“Every property is for sale in the nation, I think, for the right price, but yes, it is for sale,” Arizona Center Marketing Manager Jean Ahsmuhs said. She added, though, that she could not comment on many further details.
The retail complex went on sale around the beginning of September, according to Bob Young, senior vice president of C.B. Richard Ellis, the brokerage firm responsible for the deal.
General Growth Properties emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month, and as part of their dealings have refocused their efforts on only mall properties, Young said. They are selling many other types of properties.
“That is all part of their plan going forward in terms of what properties they want to focus on and what’s important to them,” Young said.
Ahsmuhs confirmed that the bankruptcy-related decision came at a time when the company was selling several other properties.
Neither Ahsmuhs nor Young commented on potential buyers, but Young offered a general estimate of the property’s value at around $150 million.
Dan Klocke, with the Downtown Phoenix Partnership, said the sale was a closed-bid process, meaning the details about buyers and asking prices were not likely to be released.
The Arizona Center, a two-story complex that is home to 23 different businesses, is operated as a ground lease, owned by the City of Phoenix and rented out by its owners.
Though the Arizona Center has been for sale for almost three months, many of the shopping center’s business managers and owners said they did not know it was on the market.
“This is news to me,” said William Nasralla, owner of DAVINCI Studios, a European men’s clothing store.
Greg Axe, the co-owner of Oak Creek, a Southwest specialty store that has been in the Arizona Center for about 20 years, had also not heard the news, but he said he believed the information to just be a rumor.
“If there’s a rumor that the Center’s for sale, that doesn’t mean that the center is going to get sold,” Axe said. “In order to sell something, you have to have someone buy it. There’s not a lot of money laying around out there at this point.”
Others said they had heard but not through formal communication from the complex.
“They don’t tell us anything–They don’t tell us who it is,” said Chris Mirza, general manager of Mi Amigo’s Restaurant, which has been a tenant in the Arizona Center for 16 years. He said he learned of the decision when people came to look at the property a couple weeks ago.
Robert Aguilar, owner of Culture Fresh, a retailer on the first story of the Arizona Center, also learned of the decision from outside sources.
“I heard like a month ago, but I didn’t hear it from the Arizona Center. I heard it from some tenants,” he said, adding that he would have preferred more communication from the Arizona Center in order to prepare for the future.
Aguilar said he is unsure if the sale will affect his business positively or negatively.
Mirza, on the other hand, didn’t believe a sale would affect his business at all, saying that it was up to the restaurant and how well it does. DAVINCI’s owner Nasralla also didn’t believe it would affect his store.
Young said any impact a sale may potentially have would be positive.
“Anybody buying is doing so with the intention to make it better,” he said.
Journalism freshman Vivian Padilla, who said she visits the Arizona Center about once every week, did not know the shopping center was for sale but hopes it will change its vision to a student focus if it does change hands.
“I hope that if the Arizona Center is sold and is improved and renewed it would have the same goal as CityScape, that it would want to attract a younger crowd and a bigger crowd to the downtown area,” Padilla said. “But if nothing were to change, I’d still be OK with it, because I still really do enjoy it.”
Young acknowledged the direction could change depending on the buyer, with vacant properties being converted into anything from hotel to office space depending on “how the property fills out over time,” but changes would not happen right away.
“I don’t think anybody is going to come in and immediately make changes to a property like that especially in this market,” he said.
A deal is expected to likely be reached by February or March of 2011, Young said.
Contact the reporter at vpelham@asu.edu
