TUCSON, ARIZONA — Vast Commercial Real Estate Solutions, a full-service commercial real estate and investment brokerage firm, brokered the sale of a single-tenant office building at 9302 East 22nd Street, Tucson, AZ 85710.

Located on 1.575 acres along 22nd Street, west of Harrison Road, the 8,556-square-foot space sold for $2.175 million ($254.21 PSF) on September 8, 2021.

Constructed in 1984, the building was home to Saguaro Eastside Medical Group for 21 years before being redeveloped in 2019 as an autism therapy center for Hopebridge, LLC.

Jon O’Shea of Vast represented the seller, Tucson Portfolio 4, LLC of Tucson, AZ (Rob Fischrup, manager).  The buyer, DIVISM, LLC and Sarabjeet and Ravinder Waraich of Oregon was represented by Sean Westfall, Partner – Echo West Capital Advisors, a Phoenix based investment brokerage specializing in the sale and advisory of net leased assets nationwide.

Vast is a full-service commercial real estate firm that specializes in investment and consulting services. Since its inception in 2008, the company has represented purchasers and sellers in over $100 million dollars of transactions, while having actively leased over 600,000-square-feet in Southern Arizona.

For more information, O’Shea should be reached at 520.624.9400.

To learn more, see RED Comp #9145.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – CBRE announced the sale of six multifamily properties in Phoenix, Tempe and Scottsdale, Ariz. for a total of $22.5 million ($192,310 per unit).

Brian Smuckler, Jeff Seaman, Derek Smigiel and Bryson Fricke of CBRE facilitated all six transactions.

The properties total 117 units and include:

• Parkview on 5th / 704-724 West 5th Street, Tempe – 17 units
• Baker’s Apartments / 3002 North 39th Street, Phoenix – 14 units
• Mount Crescent / 1452 East Cinnabar Avenue, Phoenix – 26 units
• The Chelsea / 2510 East Thomas Road, Phoenix – 12 units
• The Michelle / 834 North 13th Avenue, Phoenix – 24 units
• The Rise @ Old Town / 4020 North Parkway Avenue, Scottsdale – 24 units

The Parkview, Baker’s and Chelsea properties were acquired by private out-of-state investors while the Mount Crescent, Michelle and The Rise @ Old Town were purchased by Arizona-based limited liability companies.

All six properties have been extensively renovated to better meet the increasing rental demand in the region.

“The Greater Phoenix metro as well as other strategic regions in the state, such as Scottsdale, are some of the strongest multifamily markets in the country, and we have seen tremendous demand from private investors, many from out of state, who are looking for stable, income-producing investments,” said Smuckler.

A recent CBRE survey of commercial real estate investors ranked Phoenix as a top-10 target among America’s metros. The Sun Belt market jumped five spots to #4 in the firm’s 2021 Americas Investor Intentions Survey.

PHOTO: Courtesy photo of Mount Crescent

TUCSON, Arizona— As further evidence that Tucson’s innovation ecosystem is a rising star at the national level, both Startup Tucson and The University of Arizona Center for Innovation (UACI) each secured $50,000 in prize money from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Tucson secured two out of the three Growth Accelerator Fund Competition prizes awarded in Arizona. Both organizations were awarded the prize for their exceptional focus on making entrepreneurship more inclusive; Startup Tucson targeting rural and Spanish-speaking food entrepreneurs while UACI focusing on increasing the number of women STEM entrepreneurs.

UACI has proposed innovative ideas to support women-led startups researching and developing STEM-related innovations. The $50,000 will be used to hire female student interns and match them with women-led startups to give them strategic commercialization insight and to support them in advancing technology through federally funded projects such as SBIR awards. UACI already leads the national average of diverse founders, furthermore, this program will ramp up the pipeline for young talent entering the field.

Startup Tucson will use the funds to expand their existing food and agricultural programs to entrepreneurs who are rural and/or Spanish-speaking. The $50,000 will allow Startup Tucson to deliver the programming outside of Tucson to the surrounding communities and provide for its translation into Spanish, a need identified throughout the rollout of the food programs developed under their 2020 USDA Farmers Market Promotion grant. An additional focus of the funding will be to increase fiscal resources to agricultural entrepreneurs through SBIR/STTR grant training and adding an AgTech Prize to their annual pitch competition, IdeaFunding (April 2022).

This infusion of federal funding is just one more indication that Tucson’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is beginning to differentiate itself from other, perhaps larger metropolitan areas, through their implementation of out-of-the-box innovations and intentional focus on making entrepreneurship accessible to all. For example, Startup Tucson’s recent Lab-to-Market Inclusive Ecosystem Prize and UACI’s recent contracts with the Department of Energy American Made Challenge all point to Tucson being recognized nationwide as an up-and-coming entrepreneurial hub, with a unique focus on diversity and inclusion.

“I am proud to announce the winners of the 2021 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition and SBIR Catalyst prize competition. This year’s cohort of winners emphasizes our commitment to equity. Our awardees have innovative plans to support underserved entrepreneurs, including women, people of color, and individuals from underrepresented geographic areas,” said SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman.

“This funding is allowing us to meet critical needs we have identified working with food entrepreneurs in our Food Forward program. Tucson has such incredible potential as a City of Gastronomy and member of the international Delice Network, but some of the very entrepreneurs that have put us on the map as a food city can’t take advantage of our services due to a language or distance barrier. This project will be just one building block of moving toward a unified and supportive food ecosystem,” shared Dre Thompson, Executive Vice President of Startup Tucson.

“We are very excited that Southern Arizona obtained not one, but two of these prizes. It highlights the fact that our region has what it takes to creatively support innovators. For UACI, this funding will allow us to increase support for women-led startups in the region while providing opportunities for female students at the University of Arizona to understand what it is like to take innovations to the market,” stated Eric Smith, Executive Director of UACI.