Broadway east of Stone Avenue downtown resembles pre-1989 East Berlin with a dispirited jumble of eight surface parking lots, a closed hotel, a few isolated and generally vacant business buildings scattered about, not a single retail shop and a dearth of foot traffic.

Downtown’s busiest street serves little purpose except for eastbound motorists bound for suburbia.

The East Berlin exclamation point is the former federal courthouse annex at 44 E. Broadway, its entire front and back walls stripped away, evoking a postwar ruin more than 21st-century chic.

Yet that very building is on the verge of bringing more modernity than downtown housing has ever seen.

At 44 Broadway Lofts, owner James LeBeau and business partner John Dunn are transforming a former courthouse into a $14.1 million luxury lofts complex with a four-story glass wall facing Broadway.

A few blocks to the east, Ross Rulney is working with the 1917 western neoclassical revival Julian-Drew Building, 178-188 E. Broadway, and behind it a carriage house and the Tiburon Apartments, to reshape the block as The Flats at Julian Drew Block with condos selling in the low- to mid-$100,000s.

Both projects are represented by Long Realty. Both are opening sales offices Aug. 22. Both developers believe they can bring a diverse socioeconomic crowd to live downtown for as little as $100,000 at the Flats to as much as $1.35 million for a penthouse atop 44 Broadway.

Both are bringing European and Asian influences to their designs that could rile some locals but Dunn says Southwest design is “just overdone here.”

“If we do it right, we’ll get a modern street,” said Glenn Lyons, chief executive of the Downtown Tucson Partnership. “East of Scott, there’s nothing to speak of (now on Broadway). You walk down there and it looks like we tore something down.”

Each of those surface parking lots needs a building. Broadway should be a string of buildings on both sides of the street.

Lyons himself is working to convert one of the surface parking lots - the county-owned lot behind Chicago Store - into an office building, market or maybe student housing.

Rulney does not resort to words of bleakness in describing Broadway, even the surface parking lot across from his Julian-Drew Building.

“It’s a very unique opportunity,” Rulney said. “Today it just screams opportunity.”
LeBeau grabbed the opportunity at 44 E. Broadway 3 1/2 years ago and survived a series of partnerships to reconstruct the vacant courthouse building that accomplished nothing. Earlier this year, LeBeau partnered with Dunn, president of Jobax, a Phoenix general contractor now focusing more on Tucson.

Dunn pulled LeBeau out of his funk and quickly assembled a new vision for the 44 Broadway project. By March, Dunn was tearing down the north and south walls, exposing all five floors to the elements.

“When we took over, it was a nondescript building,” Dunn said. “There’s gotta be so much more that this building can be.”

Dunn will make a former fortresslike structure hospitable by giving the 30 condos 18-foot floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows on one side. The split-level lofts will have living rooms with an 18-foot ceiling and a bedroom above the kitchen, a dining area and, in some units, a study.

Dunn brought in Phoenix architectural designer Ed Keeney to add a penthouse level on the roof with a modern Asian curvilinear clamshell roofline that curves upward and downward.

“This is not a look you’ve had before,” Dunn said. “This is a totally new look. It’s to bring a lifestyle that hasn’t been here before. I call it a cosmopolitan lifestyle. The concept is to be able to see out of the building. You are in an environment that is part of the outside world.”

At street level, Craig Finfrock, leasing agent at Commercial Retail Advisors, is working with 3,800 square feet that could be a 120- to 150-seat all-day restaurant or a nighttime restaurant “like Barrio Grill or Cafe Poca Cosa” with a separate coffee shop for the daytime hours. There will be an outdoor deck with a swimming pool and outdoor dining area above the restaurant as well as sidewalk dining.
Melissa Black, associate broker at Long Realty, cites economic theory to back her confidence to sell $350,000 to $1.35 million condos in downtown Tucson during a major housing and overall economic slump.

“It’s based on supply and demand,” Black says “There has been little to no supply of this type of offering. We’ve had interest from people in Boston, New York, the foothills. I’ve even had a call from a person in Dubai. The skeptics say downtown is a lost cause. It’s really not. It’s the new frontier.”

Rulney had no grand vision when he bought the Tiburon Apartments, 128 S. Fifth Ave., eight years ago. He added the neighboring carriage house and Julian-Drew Building in March 2006 to create an 1-acre plot for what has become a $10 million vision.

“It wasn’t until I got really interested in revitalizing downtown that motivated me to look at these other properties,” Rulney said. “I think the public will be pleasantly surprised sooner rather than later. I think certain projects such as this one have a very high probability for success because it leans toward redevelopment as opposed to projects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars that downtown is not ready to support.”

Rulney and downtown architect Rob Paulus plan to spruce up a 1960s apartment complex into a modern condominium for young professionals or college students or empty nesters looking to downscale. They also plan to put a cafe into the carriage house that faces onto the alley that is Arizona Avenue.

Paulus will strip out the apartments and give the new condo units wood flooring, much larger windows and modern wiring.

“It’s definitely a modern refiguring to be more functional and playful,” Paulus said.
Upper-level walkways will be detached from walls to allow more daylight to reach lower levels. These walkways will look onto the enclosed courtyard, which will have a swimming pool, desert landscaping and sun and shade areas.

Paulus was inspired by a trip to Zurich, Switzerland, for the exterior designs. The outer wall facing Fifth Avenue will have shadow boxes framing the windows and projecting outward 2 to 4 feet. The Arizona Avenue wall will have louvered panels at the edge of the balconies that can slide from side to side to block the late afternoon sun.

They expect construction to start in early to mid-2009, based on a successful sales campaign, with condos potentially ready for residents by the end of 2009, Rulney said.

“There’s nothing like this in this price range downtown,” Rulney said.

Two developers are committed to Broadway. Any more willing to make Broadway a signature street downtown rather than the remnant of East Berlin that it is?

Glenn Lyons has a 90-space parking between Scott and Sixth avenues awaiting a developer.

Credits: Tucson Citizen

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 10:35 am and is filed under Downtown, Tucson Real Estate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.