Scottsdale Arizona Real Estate Blog

Carrie Watters
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 28, 2008 07:55 AM  On Saturday, developer Steve Ellman, the man behind Westgate City Center, will begin to take reservations for high-end residential towers he has showcased with a detailed model the past few months.

In the fall, work should begin on the Majestic, a 10-story tower of glass, brick and steel that will contain 181 condos. The Art Deco and warehouse-inspired units will range from 700 to 3,500 square feet, with prices ranging from $400,000 to $2 million.

The reservation period gives those interested a chance to get first choice on the units they want. The Majestic offers tower living with penthouse units on the top two floors, and townhomes on a third-floor terrace that has a garden and other amenities.

By summer, a public report should be issued that details the project and its surroundings for potential buyers. After that, buyers would have seven to 10 days to move forward with a contract, or get a refund.

The Majestic would open in about two years.

Reid Butler, president of the urban communities division of The Ellman Companies, said the project would bring “city living in Glendale and the West Valley.”

The western area of Glendale along the Loop 101 corridor is planned as a high-density, urban living area as well as a commercial center.

The Majestic would be just east of the AMC Theatres, in the midst of the larger Westgate project that includes shops, hotels, offices and nearly 20 restaurants and bars anchored by Jobing.com Arena. At build-out, Westgate should include as much as 8 million square feet of development and 2,000 residences.

Ellman also is planning a 15-story tower called Cameo, although a construction timeline has not yet been established for that project.

Other Majestic features include:

• A rooftop circle pool and party deck.

• Designer kitchens by Dacor.

• Movable walls.

• Large terraces for each tower home.

• A high-tech fitness center.

• Private underground parking for residents.

• A 20,000-square-foot Majestic Club that includes a garden-level pool and fireplace, surrounded by a bamboo retreat.   

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Diana Balazs
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 24, 2008 11:30 AM  SCOTTSDALE –

Around 600 B.C., the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon was considered one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. According to Greek historians, the project featured terraces and roofs filled with topsoil to accommodate even large trees. There was an elaborate system to pump water from the Euphrates River to the garden beds and a seal made of reeds, tar, brick and concrete kept soil moisture from penetrating the roof structure.

Fast forward to 2008 to Scottsdale’s Optima Camelview Village condominium project northwest of Highland Avenue and Scottsdale Road.  The 700-unit glass-and-steel project features terraced and rooftop gardens where 25 to 30 different kinds of colorful plants from groundcovers to trees grow. All the plants were selected for their low water use. A computerized drip watering system is used and a special fertilizer mix is added to the water to nourish the plants.“Most of these plants just take off. I mean, they just grow incredibly rapidly,” said architect and Optima founder David Hovey.He mentioned one cascading vine called wedelia used in the project that will grow 10 or 12 feet in 3 months. “They all hang over the edge of the buildings, so it’s almost like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” Hovey said.

Growing green up top

Hovey has been incorporating green roofs in his building designs for about 30 years, originally on a much smaller scale. “This is, I think, the largest green roof installation of any residential development in the world,” Hovey said.Three landscape architects and a landscaping contractor, ISS Grounds Control, keep the Optima Camelview Village project beautiful and growing. The project site is about 14 acres with 23 acres of landscaping.”The only way we can do it is by these green roof areas, and some of these buildings are seven stories high, they vary in height from two stories to seven stories,” Hovey said.Each of the project’s units have a private outdoor area with in-ground landscaping.

“Most condominiums will have a balcony or no balcony at all for outdoor space,” Hovey said.

How it works

Hovey said on top of each of the units’ concrete deck structure is placed a waterproofing membrane. And over that a protection board and a drainage mat about a half inch thick. “So what happens when it rains, the water goes through all the soil and then drains through the mat to a vertical downspout and from there is either recaptured or goes into the storm sewer system,” Hovey said.Between 6 inches and 2 feet of custom mixed local dirt is placed on top of everything depending on how the big the plants are.Hovey said an entire year’s lifecycle of soil mixtures and plants were tested at Mountain States Wholesale Nursery in Glendale. There were 12 test beds. Different plants were selected for different areas because of the project’s design and the orientation of the sun in summer and winter.

“Some plants are mostly in the shade and there are some plants that are always in the sun and they’re entirely different. Ones in the shade would never work in the sun and ones in the sun would never work in the shade. It’s a very complex situation. We’ve analyzed it both on the computer and by taking sun readings where we actually measured the sun scientifically at different locations so we know ahead of time what the exact condition is,” he said.

The drainage system can be adjusted based on how much water needs to be siphoned.

“We have a double system. For example, if it rains too fast too quickly, we have releases where it goes over the edge. One of the great things about green roofs is that when you get sudden storms, the soil absorbs the rain and it slowly lets it into the storm drain system so the city of Scottsdale is very happy because they are not getting millions of gallons of water thrown at them all at the same time,” Hovey said.

Benefits abound

Another advantage of green roofs is that the plants create oxygen out of carbon dioxide and the green roof also provides insulation for the building below. “There’s just all kinds of benefits that go beyond the aesthetics,” Hovey said.And all that landscaping combined with less concrete and asphalt helps lower the ambient temperature between 10 to 12 degrees in urban situations, Hovey said.“It’s both working together. Of course, naturally being an architect, my main objective of the plants is to provide an aesthetically very pleasing environment,” he said.

Hovey’s love of plants is deep rooted.

“I’ve always as an architect have been very interested in landscaping. My idea would be that the building is just a backdrop and the landscaping is sort of the main feature,” he said.

Optima Camelview Village Plant List

Here is a typical variety of plants used on the Scottsdale project’s condominium terrace and roof gardens:

Trees : Paloverde, Chilean mesquite, Texas ebony.

Shrubs: Orange jubilee ,Texas sage, Anacacho orchid tree, boungainvillea. Palms: Mediterranean fan palm, sago palm.

Flowering plants: Lantana, Lady Banks rose, ruellia, bush dalea.

Accents: Agaves, aloes.

Vines: Wedelia, Cat claw, jasmine.   

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Yvonne Wingett and Ryan Konig
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 20, 2008 12:00 AM  

Maricopa County added more people than any other county in the United States last year, swelling the population to almost four million people, according to new population estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. A net increase of about 102,000 people moved to the Valley or were born here between 2006 and 2007. As of July 1, 3.9 million people lived in Maricopa County. Pinal County, meanwhile, was the nation’s third-fastest-growing county, growing by 11.5 percent over the previous year, with 31,000 new residents. “The bad news is that there’s really been a slowdown” in Maricopa County, said William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. “If you live there, you don’t feel it. The housing crunch, the difficulty of people being able to finance homes, and the reluctance to leave the homes they’re in had some part in (the slowdown).”

St. Bernard and Orleans, two Louisiana parishes hammered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, were the nation’s fastest-growing counties in 2007 percentage-wise, fueled in part by residents returning after the disaster. St. Bernard grew by 42.9 percent. Orleans grew by 13.8 percent.  All but one of the nation’s 10 fastest-growing counties were in the South or West.Among the 10 counties that added the largest number of residents between 2006 and 2007, half were in Texas; two were in North Carolina; and California and Nevada each had one. Los Angeles County lost 2,000 residents, but still remained the most populous county, with 9.9 million people.

Maricopa County kept booming with people like Kim Allred, who traded snowboarding for sunbathing a couple of years back.

Young and ready for life outside of Salt Lake City, she moved to Phoenix to start a career and have some fun. She thought about moving to California or New York, but Phoenix’s job market, housing prices, diversity and weather won her over.

“I can still take a road trip home,” said Allred, 25, who trains and prepares people to become foster parents at a non-profit. “I liked the atmosphere and the city, I had family here, and so I figured, why not.”

About 40 percent of Maricopa County’s new residents came from natural increase – the net gain of births and deaths between 2006 and 2007. About 39 percent came from internal (state-to-state) migration. An additional 21 percent came from international immigration.

The census data did not break down whether the immigration was legal or illegal.

Maricopa County’s growth this decade peaked from July 1, 2004, to July 1, 2005, when it grew by 4.1 percent. The yearly growth rate dropped to 2.7 percent between 2006 and 2007, which so far is the lowest rate this decade, but still enough to call it a boom.

Projections by Maricopa County put the population at 5 million within the next 10 years.

Top-growth honors can also cause headaches.

More than ever, the pressure is on state, county and local governments to accommodate all the people, expand roads, preserve resources, provide quality education and amenities, and sustain services.

“(Governments) just need to keep thinking relentlessly to keep coming up with more right and bright ideas,” said Maricopa County Manager David Smith. “It’s almost a shame on us if we don’t anticipate and deal with some of the potential problems before they get here.”

The Associated Press
Mar. 18, 2008 11:41 AM  WASHINGTON –

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday slashed a key interest rate by three-fourths of a percentage point, moving aggressively to contain a credit crisis threatening to push the country into a severe recession. The latest action brought the federal funds rate – the interest that banks charge each other – down to 2.25 percent, the lowest point since late 2004. It marked the second back-to-back cuts of three-fourths of a percentage point.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleages have now cut the funds rate six times since last September, with the reductions becoming more aggressive since January as the central bank has faced growing turmoil in global financial markets.

In Jacksonville, Fla., Tuesday, President Bush said the government will take further action – if necessary – to help the sagging economy.The rate cut Tuesday caps an unprecedented period of Fed actions aimed at trying to stabilize financial markets and ward off a recession or at least keep it from being too severe.

While the cut was larger than the Fed’s normal quarter-point moves, markets dropped sharply in the moments after the announcement, with investors disappointed that the central bank did not cut rates by a full percentage point.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 100 points within two minutes of the Fed’s mid-afternoon announcement. It had been up 286 points just before the annoucenment as stocks had posted a strong rally after Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs reported better-than-expected results for the first quarter. That came as welcome news following the collapse over the weekend of Bear Stearns, which was forced into a fire-sale to JP Morgan Chase & Co.

The reduction in the funds rate was designed to lower borrowing costs and boost spending by consumers and businesses and thus increase economic activity. Economic growth slowed to a near standstill in the final three months of this year as the economy was hit by a series of blows including the credit crunch, a prolonged housing slump, rising unemployment and surging energy prices.

The funds rate cut quickly triggered announcements from commercial banks that they were cutting their prime lending rate to 5.25 percent from 6 percent, where it was before the Fed meeting. This rate is the benchmark for millions of business and consumer loans.  www.theholmgroupaz.com 

Cathryn Creno
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 11, 2008 02:44 PM  Sales of existing homes in metro Phoenix climbed from January but declined 13 percent in February compared with sales recorded a year ago, an Arizona State University real estate expert reported Tuesday.

The median resale home sale price dropped 15 percent, to $220,000 last month from $260,000 in February 2007, said Jay Butler, director of Realty Studies in the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus.

In February, 3,710 sales were recorded, compared with February 2007′s 4,280.  Homes selling for less than $200,000 now comprise 40 percent of the resale homes for sale in metro Phoenix, Butler said.

A bright spot in the report shows that that last month’s numbers were better than January’s, when 3,350 sales recorded. It could be a sign that spring home buying season is starting.

“For some people it’s a win, a great time to buy,” Butler said. “Yes, prices are probably going to go lower, but there are a lot of people out there willing help people get into good mortgages now.”

On the other hand, Butler said, homeowners who purchased or refinanced at the 2006 market peak will have to sit tight at least “for a couple years” if they want to sell their homes for as much as the purchase price.

Butler predicts that people who bought homes in areas that are built out will see prices recover more quickly than those who purchased on the outskirts of the metro area, in places where neighborhoods and shopping centers remain unfinished.

“What we went through was a really crazy time,” he said, referring to the $85,000-plus surge in median resale home prices from 2004 to late 2006, when median prices rose from $174,815 to $260,600. “We had never seen big increases in prices before. We got caught up in this frenzy, and it is going to take awhile to work our way out of it.”   

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