To the left is a photo of the northern portion of the Central Corridor, the newer of Phoenix's two downtown areas. The older section, much of which has been renamed Copper Square, contains the city's largest building - the Chase Bank building (nee the Valley National Bank building, the Bank One building, etc.)

At least, the Chase building currently is the city's largest at 483 feet. But that will change thanks to a series of proposed projects that literally are changing the landscape of the city in general and the Phoenix real estate market in particular.

Compared to many major metropolitan areas, Phoenix's downtown is ... well ... quaint. There was the Chase building, the U.S. Bank Building, the two Renaissance Center buildings, Viad Center, the Arizona Center and a handful of other smaller (under-25 story) buildings spread along the Central Corridor between Washington on the south and Camelback on the north. Many relocation clients have remarked on the lack of skyscrapers and my comment always was the same ... we're in the West. The availability of land never has been an issue, so Phoenix has grown out and not up.

(There also are other factors at work, including the relatively late population explosion, as detailed in his article on wikipedia.)

That changed for residential real estate a few years ago with the introduction of lofts to the Phoenix market. With the exception of one older high-rise tower on Central, large-scale apartment complexes in the area generally topped out at three stories. Anything larger was unheard of. But then the loft developers can and started redeveloping (at first) some of the city's historic buildings into combination residential/commercial mixed-use developments. Soon after, these taller buildings were being built from the ground up in Tempe, Phoenix and Scottsdale.

A recent trip to Sun Devil Stadium reveiled multiple loft projects in and around Hardy and 5th Street in the middle of one of Tempe's olders neighborhoods and, not coincidentally, barely a mile from the main campus of Arizona State University. And that says nothing of three projects under construction in downtown Phoenix - 44 Monroe, a 34-story residential condo tower; the Phoenix Convention Center Hotel, a 31-story hotel and Summit at Copper Square, a 22-story residential tower.

Changes also are coming in the commercial sector. The 39-story W hotel has been approved, and there are three proposed mixed-use projects on the drawing board - two of 40 stories and a third of 38.

While vacant land still can be found in many portions of the Phoenix area, much less the rest of Maricopa County, the high-rise boom appears to be an extension of a more general trend in local real estate - developers maximizing a given parcel for full profit. It is this kind of thinking which has led to the building of multiple infill projects involving patio or courtyard homes - lots are significantly smaller than in traditional single-family housing, but the prices also tend to be lower than a single-family house.

The biggest question regarding many of these larger-scale projects is the current sluggishness in the local real estate market. Another development boom in the 1980s turned bust quickly, though the S&L scandal played a large role in causing the real estate market in Phoenix to tumble. At this stage, the local economy remains robust and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future.

In that future, though, the city itself will look far different than it does today.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes