Dam Plan Flows through Approval Process; Luxury Apartments for Elevation Chandler Site

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

A $98 million investment is about to be made in Maricopa County and this project really needs to hold water. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors recently passed a plan for a 10-year rehabilitation initiative of the 18-mile McMicken Dam. The structure was built back in 1956 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers due to the constant flooding of Luke Air Force Base caused by heavy rainfall in the early 50s. The damn now protects several settlements that have since formed in the floodplain, making the necessity of consolidating it even more urgent.

The flood-banning structure stretches between a desert just north of Sun City West and through Surprise finally ending in an unincorporated area north of Luke, ktar.com reports. The structural elements of the dam are deemed too old and safety issue-ridden, hence the need for the project. The design phase of the plan that aims to reconsolidate the outdated earthen dam will be finalized by 2014, according to information gathered by ktar.com from the Maricopa County Flood Control District.

Revamping and reworking seem to be the name of the game in Phoenix real estate recently, with news coming in regarding the possible purchase of the problematic hotel site between Loop 101 and Loop 202. The Arizona Republic reports that a letter of intent has been submitted to approve the move of Elevation Chandler into new ownership. The interested party is Englewood, Colorado-based developer Archstone Apartments. The company intends to redevelop the site that currently includes a partly built structure and create a luxury apartment complex. Archstone currently has 428 communities—its portfolio comprises 76,891 apartments—in the U.S. and Europe. Archstone, which is a private company, is owned by a host of companies, two of which are Bank of America and Barclays.