5.3 Acre “Argo at Town Lake” Project Sells for $13.5m, Purchased in 2011 for $4.6m

Vizzda – May 20, 2013 –  Evergreen Development sold a 5.3 acre parcel of land immediately south of the Tempe Center for the Arts for $13.5m or $58.19 per ft² to Lennar Multifamily- a newly formed division of Lennar Corporation.  Lennar secured a $37.5m construction deed of trust with California Bank and Trust. Andrew Skipper, co-founder of Evergreen, and Erik R Higgens, Vice President of Lennar Multifamily Investors, closed the deal.

The subject property is 5.3258 acres or 231,991 ft² of commercial acreage zoned MU-4 or “Mixed Use High Density” per the final-plat approved December 21, 2012. Evergreen entitled the site for 328 mutli-family units for the “Argo at Town Lake”. See this link for the PLANNING DOCUMENTS.
  
Plans call for a single six-story structure of 604K ft². The top four floors will feature 319 apartments including 32 studio, 135 one-bedroom, 136 two-bedroom and 16 three-bedroom apartments. The remaining 9 units of multifamily are live/work spaces clustered at the south side of the building with a ground floor business space connected by private stairwell to a residence above; these work spaces total 1,909 ft² of retail/office.

The site plan includes a 738 ft² coffee shop and “truck court” area with room for four mobile food truck restaurants and an outdoor seating area which will cater to pedestrian traffic when the Tempe Center for the Arts hosts events.

The bulk of this site was originally acquired by Zacher Development on January 19, 2007 as a 5.06 acre assemblage for $17,401,289 and financed by a $20.0m loan from Mortgages Limited and a $1.39m loan from Metropolitan Land Company. The property was noticed for trustee sale on May 8, 2008 and reverted to the receiver for the now-defunct Mortgages Limited (ML Manager) at a December 4th, 2009 trustee sale with a credit bid of $3.5m.

The property was sold to Evergreen on June 13, 2011 for $4.6m or $20.86 per ft²; with $2.1m down and $2.5m debt with National Bank of Arizona. Cricket Communications signed a 5 year lease (with extensions) on January 24th, 2013 to operate a cellular tower on the site – a mobile tower is on the site and a permanent tower is under construction. 

To sign up for information on this and other commercial real estate transactions, please visit www.vizzda.com and  request a product demonstration.

Edward Moore
Director of Research

emoore@vizzda.com
www.vizzda.com