The principals of USA Place, LLC Susan Eastridge, CEO of Concord Eastridge, Michael Hallmark, principal of Future Cities, and Robert Harris, CEO of Harris Sports & Entertainment are in final stages to realize USA Place, a $350 million mixed-use project in Downtown Tempe.

Eastridge’s experience includes the development of more than 7 million-square-feet of commercial space valued in excess of $1.5 billion and the acquisition/disposition of approximately $900 million in commercial property.

Founded by Hallmark and Sean Duncan, Future Cities is a planning and development company that leads in the creation of destination venues, attractions and fan/guest experiences all within the context of better-planned and more sustainable urban communities. Prior to founding Harris Sports & Entertainment, a venue and events management firm, Harris served as VP of the Phoenix Suns where he played an integral role in the franchise’s business operations from 1992 – 20006. Harris will manage the facility and create original programming for the center including tournaments, camps, leagues and clinics.

This is the first of a new breed of these kinds of facilities,” said architect Michael Hallmark, an ASU graduate who has worked on such projects as US Airways Center and Chase Field.

The new 330-room Omni Hotel and 30,000-square-foot conference center on 10.5-acres at the southeast corner of Mill Ave. and University Dr. is subject to final approval by Tempe City Council and Arizona Board of Regents.

In addition to the hotel and conference center, USA Place will include a new national headquarters and training center for USA Basketball, a 4,500-seat event center, 500 luxury apartments, 160,000 sq. ft. of retail space and up to 200,000 sq. ft. of office, including the new home for Arizona Interscholastic Association events.

At a Board meeting on July 25, USA Basketball’s Board of Directors approved the move to Tempe and USA Place as the home of its new national headquarters and training center from its current location in Colorado Springs, CO.

“This is a big-time move for USA Basketball, one that I personally have been dreaming about for some time,” said Jerry Colangelo, USA Basketball chairman and former Phoenix Suns chairman/CEO. “All of amateur basketball will flow through our facility. It’s going to make its mark on the game that I feel so passionate about.”

The complex could draw more than 300,000 people to Tempe annually, developers said. In addition to the Olympic teams, USA Basketball chooses rosters for the world championships and other international competitions and holds tryouts and training camps for national teams of various ages.

The full-service Omni Hotel will be Tempe’s first four-diamond hotel. With 58 distinctive luxury hotels and resorts across North America, Omni Hotels & Resorts is recognized as a market leader for group and transient business as well as with leisure travelers. Omni executives recognize the Tempe site and development concept as important to Omni’s brand.

“USA Place is our first property development in the Valley, which is important to our brand development strategy as well as for our guests,” said Mike Deitemeyer, president of Omni Hotels & Resorts. “The complex presents Tempe with great synergistic opportunities, and we are committed to ensuring that the Omni Tempe Hotel, and our team, is engaged in the Tempe community, Greater Phoenix region and state.”

The adjacent 30,000-square-foot conference center will feature a grand ballroom capable of seating 1,000 for dining, a junior ballroom and meeting space. A new multi-court event center, with seating up to 4,500, will serve as the training site for USA Basketball primarily in the summer months and for regional youth and adult recreational and competitive athletics programming the rest of the year.

“This is an exciting and an incredible opportunity that offers nothing but positives for USA Basketball,” said Colangelo. “USA Place will offer USA Basketball an excellent site for the development of its office headquarters, a training center and event center that will provide the organization with a first-class site for hosting junior level events and will allow USA Basketball to continue to evolve.”

Colangelo continued, “The new USA Basketball headquarters and training center will be first-class, state of art facilities, something I know we will be very proud of.”

In addition to USA Basketball, the Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) will also host programming at the event center, which will include post season state high school tournaments for boys and girls basketball, volleyball, wrestling, badminton and spiritline. High schools will also have an opportunity to participate in regular season “Games-of-the-Week” there. AIA is the primary governing body for high school athletics in Arizona.

AIA’s Chuck Schmidt believes the move will create more opportunity for AIA programs. “We’re very excited to have a permanent home where we can host our events. Being able to share a home court with USA Basketball will be a remarkable experience for our kids,” he said.

In June, the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the state universities, gave ASU permission to enter into a lease-option agreement for up to 99 years with USA Place LLC. The site is located next to ASU’s Tempe campus on land owned by ASU. ASU and the City of Tempe have formed a partnership to support the creation of the conference center and as a result, the conference center will revert to public ownership after twenty years. The project will be built with private money. Tempe spokeswoman Nikki Ripley said various aspects are still being negotiated.

The way it looks now, ASU would receive revenue from the hotel and rebate a portion of that up to $800,000 annually to the conference center for 20 years. At the end of that time, ownership of the conference center would revert to the university. The city of Tempe will collect bed taxes and other taxes from the hotel and rebate a portion up to $800,000 annually to the conference center during the same time frame.

Construction of the project is planned to begin by year-end with the hotel, conference center, event center and first phase of residential, retail and office scheduled to open during the second half of 2015.

There were no brokers involved in the negotiations.

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Legacy Property Management, LLC of Orange County, CA purchased the office building occupied by Areté Associates in The Village Offices at 3194 N Swan Road in northeast Tucson for[mepr-show rules=”58038″] $9.5 million ($265 PSF). The 35,800 sq. ft. class-A office building was custom build in 2006 for Areté Associates by Venture West, the developer of Swan Corporate Center and Village Offices at the corner of Swan and Camp Lowell.

Areté, an employee-owned company with customers in all branches of National Security, was founded in 1976 as an early stage research company working on Navy contracts. In the succeeding decades, Areté has come to offer complete operational-capability development across the technology spectrum from applied research to Limited Rate Production and Systems Engineering. Areté has teamed with many Aerospace and Defense prime contractors to deliver sophisticated hardware and software, enhancing their products delivered to the Government.

The company’s focus is on enhancing the performance of existing systems by developing software improvements in the processing algorithms. This software based approach makes Areté performance improvements broadly applicable to most sensor hardware.

Occasionally, software alone cannot provide sufficient capability enhancement so Areté has also developed new sensor hardware in those instances. Whether software- or hardware, Areté has a unique capability to offer industry partners an integrated technology development function that seamlessly integrates development from new technology research through Limited Rate Production.

Other offices for Areté are in Santa Rosa, CA, Los Angeles, CA, Longmont, CO, Chantilly, VA, Arlington, VA and Niceville, FL.

Rob Glaser, SIOR, CCIM, Principal and Industrial Specialist and Rick Kleiner, MBA, Principal and Office Specialist with Cushman & Wakefield / Picor represented the seller, NFB Investors, a private investment group affiliated with Venture West. Jonathan Garvy and Hank Wildermuth of Available Properties in Anaheim, CA represented the investor. This was the first investment in Tucson for the buyer.

Glaser and Kleiner can be reached at (520) 748-7100. Garvey and Wildermuth can be contacted at (714) 998-8205. [/mepr-show]

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[ismember]Sale date: 7/26/2013. This was the buyer’s upleg in a 1031 exchange. Property was sold at an approximate 8% cap rate based on income at time of sale.[/ismember]

Restoring the tiled turquoise dome of Pima County’s Old Courthouse, a Tucson architectural icon built in 1928, is a focal point of a $20 to $25 million proposal county officials are preparing to submit to the county bond advisory committee. The Spanish Colonial Revival courthouse, designed by prominent Tucson architect Roy Place, was built in 1928 for about $350,000.

Other proposed improvements to the Old Courthouse include converting the former offices on the first floor into space for both a Jan. 8 memorial and a planned art museum, returning one of the courtrooms to its original state, and relocating the offices of the Board of Supervisors and County Administrator to the second floor.

“The dome requires resealing to prevent water leaks and damage,” Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry wrote in a recently released memo.

Huckelberry said one of the most easily recognizable fixtures in downtown has begun to leak, requiring the county to hire a professional roofer to painstakingly remove each tile on the dome, then photograph and number it before making repairs to the underlying substructure. He hopes the repairs could also restore public access to the dome, allowing county residents and tourists to tour beneath one of downtown’s oldest structures. It has been several decades, he estimates, since the last major renovation of the courthouse.

Pima County’s Proposed $650 Million Total Bond Program that will be voted on as early as next year,  recently received national attention in Bloomberg News click here for full story .