Arizona Center
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Arizona Center is a shopping center and office complex located in downtown
Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona. With over 1.6 million residents at the 2020 census, it is the ...
.


Layout

Arizona Center features two office buildings, retail and a 24-screen AMC theatre. One Arizona Center is tall and has 19 floors. It was completed in 1989. This tower houses various legal firms with Snell & Wilmer being the largest. Other tenants include the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitor's Bureau (PHX CVB) and the main corporate offices of the
Harlem Globetrotters The Harlem Globetrotters is an American Exhibition game, exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, entertainment, and comedy in their style of play. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 ...
. Two Arizona Center stands at tall and has 20 floors. It was completed in 1990 and is the headquarters of local electric utility
Arizona Public Service Pinnacle West Capital Corporation is an American utility holding company that owns Arizona Public Service (APS). It is publicly traded on the New York Stock exchange and a component of the S&P 500 stock market index. APS is the largest utility co ...
or APS. Retail offers a variety of restaurants, boutiques and tourist shops. The large central plaza at Arizona Center includes richly landscaped courtyards and fountains designed by SWA Group, which won a National Merit Award by the American Society of Landscape Architects for its work on the plaza. Nearby, a 30-story Sheraton Phoenix Downtown hotel opened in the fall of 2008. Also, several high-end
condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...
projects in the downtown area are under construction, newly opened, or in the planning stages.


History

Arizona Center was designed by
The Rouse Company The Rouse Company was a publicly traded shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when GGP Inc., General Growth Properties (GGP) purchased the company. It was founded by Hunter Moss and James Rouse, James W. Rouse in 1939. Begin ...
(on its
festival marketplace A festival marketplace is a European-style shopping market in the United States. It is an effort to revitalize downtown areas in major US cities begun in the late 20th century. Festival marketplaces were a leading Central business district, downt ...
model, which worked to great success in other cities) and opened in the fall of 1990 to great fanfare and high expectations, as it was considered one of the original components of the ongoing downtown revitalization efforts in Phoenix taking place since the early 1990s. The expectations were high since it was developed by the same firm that created the highly successful
Faneuil Hall Marketplace Faneuil Hall ( or ; previously ) is a marketplace and meeting hall near the waterfront and Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Opened in 1742, it was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others ...
(
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
) and
Harborplace Harborplace is a shopping and dining complex on the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. Description The property consists of two pavilions, each two stories in height; one along Pratt Street, the other on Light Street. The pavilions house a ...
(
Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...
). Arizona Center was expected to be a retail, dining and entertainment magnet which would jump-start interest in downtown redevelopment, but some critics felt suburban-oriented Phoenix was not ready to embrace a downtown development of this caliber. Critics have also pointed out the relative scarcity of permanent upscale
apartment An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement (Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that ...
and/or
condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...
housing in the immediate vicinity as a factor in the lackluster performance of the mall. Most of the residential districts surrounding the downtown area are middle-to-lower income, not adequate to support the middle-to-high-end
marketing mix The marketing mix is the set of controllable elements or variables that a company uses to influence and meet the needs of its target customers in the most effective and efficient way possible. These variables are often grouped into four key ...
that Arizona Center set out to provide. Many of the initial retailers struggled to attract customers, and by 2003, the large second-story
food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food Vendor, vendors and provides a common area for self-serve di ...
, similar to those found in suburban
shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...
s, was closed and reconfigured into the Phoenix regional office of
Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...
-based architectural firm
SmithGroup SmithGroup is an international architectural, engineering and planning firm. Established in 1853 by architect Sheldon Smith, SmithGroup is the longest continually operating architecture and engineering firm in the United States that is not a w ...
. The Rouse Company was acquired by General Growth Properties in 2004. After going through bankruptcy, GGP sold Arizona Center to CommonWealth REIT in 2011. Arizona Center underwent a major renovation from 2017 to 2019. The Arizona Center took huge hits from the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
in 2020 and 2021. The white collar office workers from One Arizona Center, the APS high rise, and other downtown Phoenix office buildings started to work from home during the pandemic, and have never fully come back. Arizona Center lost 12 restaurants and all retail establishments during that period, including major, previously highly popular tenants such as
Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational List of coffeehouse chains, chain of coffeehouses and Starbucks Reserve, roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gor ...
,
Hooters Hooters is the registered trademark used by two American restaurant chains: Hooters, Inc., based in Clearwater, Florida, and Hooters of America, Inc. based in Atlanta, Georgia, and owned by the private investment firm Nord Bay Capital (with Tr ...
(one of the original restaurants that opened in 1990), and Subway. The complex is now struggling as foot traffic fell to almost nothing. The local management office admittedly does not expect to see foot traffic revive for several more years.


See also

*
Downtown Phoenix Downtown Phoenix is the central business district (CBD) of the City of Phoenix, Arizona, United States. It is in the heart of the Phoenix metropolitan area or Valley of the Sun. Phoenix, being the county seat of Maricopa County, Arizona, ...
*
List of historic properties in Phoenix, Arizona This is a list, which includes photographic galleries, of some of the remaining historic structures and monuments, of historic significance, in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Included are photographs of properties identified by the African, A ...


References


External links


AZ Center – Shop, Dine, Live in the Heart of Downtown PhoenixArizona Public Service homepageHelp Center – The Arizona RepublicThis is Phoenix, Arizona
{{coord, 33.4537, -112.0693, type:landmark_region:US-AZ, display=title Skyscraper office buildings in Phoenix, Arizona Buildings and structures completed in 1990 Brookfield Properties Retail buildings in Phoenix, Arizona HKS, Inc. buildings