Summit Condos Trade Up; City Looks to End CityNorth Development Contract

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

Summit at Copper Square recently moved 74 of its unsold condos. The units traded for the average amount of $171,000 after initially being listed between $300,000 and $1.2 million. The per-unit amount brings the transaction total to a cool $12.7 million given the fact that reports place the liquidation value of those units at $7.3 million.

According to The Arizona Republic, commercial real estate market tracker Vizzda’s estimate of the sales prices is fair, considering the overall market. The Republic notes that the buyers were two principals of Los Angeles-based Urban Commons LLC. The seller is the Stearns Bank of Scottsdale which had foreclosed on the property in July.
The $65 million-dollar high-rise finished development in 2006 hot on the trail of the real estate market bubble, at the time being pegged as an important stepping stone for the area’s escalating residential market. It failed to impress having only sold 91 units by the time the market dropped and owner W Developments LLC eventually filed for Chapter 11 in order to prevent the property’s descent into foreclosure. Failing to successfully reorganize their assets, W Developments lost the property, and Stearns Bank became the new owner.

Also making headlines is the legal battle over Phoenix’s City North development as the city is struggling to revoke a development agreement worth $97.4 million. The row between development company Klutznick and city officials came over the agreement that called for the city to share as much as half of the revenue generated by sales taxes obtained by the project for the next 11 years, or a maximum of $97.4 million AZR reports.

The agreement would start as soon as the first 1.2 million square feet of retail space was opened by the developer, as well as 3,000 parking spaces. The city claims Klutznick Co. has defaulted on the terms of the agreement and is now seeking to end the contract.

CityNorth was initially supposed to be a $1.2 billion project that was set to offer as much as 6 million square feet of space. To date, the developer has managed to complete a total of 175,000 square feet of retail space.