Luxury homebuilder plans for nearly 500 apartments in Phoenix

PHOENIX — Single-family homebuilder Toll Brothers has planned its first apartments for metro Phoenix, pouring $132 million into the locations.

The Phoenix Business Journal reported this week that 243 units were to go up downtown at Fifth Avenue and Van Buren Street and 256 units were set for Central Avenue and Thomas Road. Combined, that gives the area 499 more living spaces.

The national luxury builder, which operates in 20 states, bought the central Phoenix site in 2007, regional director Todd Bowen told the Journal, intending to construct high-rise condominiums. The Great Recession ended that enterprise.

Each of the complexes were expected to open in 2020.

The downtown site, Bowen said, was “definitely an up-and-coming, very happening area.”

Activity has been high in the area. In September, an unusual marketplace, the Churchill, opened near Roosevelt and First streets. An eclectic mix of tenants are housed in repurposed shipping containers.

That same month, Nebraska’s Creighton University announced it would open a $100 million health sciences campus at the site of Park Central Mall, on Central Avenue near Thomas Road.

Toll Brothers, which has offices in Scottsdale, has built upscale apartment in Washington, D.C., suburban Boston, Massachusetts; Princeton, New Jersey and near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Others have been planned for Atlanta, Georgia, and Dallas, Texas.

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