Casa Grande could someday be the epicenter of a sprawling Sun Corridor megalopolis, spanning from Tucson to Phoenix.
That was the vision given Friday by PhoenixMart Chief Executive Officer Steve Betts and AZ Sourcing President Jeremy Schoenfelder, who spoke to a sold-out crowd at the Greater Casa Grande Chamber of Commerce’s Business Outlook Luncheon at the Casa Grande Holiday Inn.
At the center of the megalopolis would be PhoenixMart, a nearly 2-million-square-foot sourcing center with 1,750 manufacturer showroom suites, attracting whole- sale buyers from around the world and triggering development of various spin-off businesses ranging from hotels, restaurants and warehouses to other services.
PhoenixMart follows the collective marketing concept used in similar developments
Emirates, where manufacturers gather in one central location to sell goods on the worldwide wholesale market.
“It’s a way of making business easier,” Schoenfelder said. “This has been done before. We didn’t invent the concept of collective marketing.”
But the aim of PhoenixMart is to take the collective marketing strategies developed in Yiwu and Dubai and tailor them for an American market. By doing so, project planners believe they can boost U.S. exports.
PhoenixMart will be more than a showroom. The facility will offer its manufacturer tenants the ability to sell products on its future website, www.ephoenixmart.com, along with a host of other services ranging from legal assistance to meeting rooms.
Schoenfelder said that when wholesale buyers look for products, they focus on quality, convenience, service and price, but U.S.-based companies often lose sales to foreign companies based on price. The PhoenixMart collective marketing concept can change that for manufacturers struggling to get their products noticed.
PhoenixMart is planned for 585 acres off Florence Boulevard near Overfield Road.
An October groundbreaking is planned and Schoenfelder said actual construction could begin by February or March.
The complex could open its doors by November 2014.
Schoenfelder said Casa Grande was chosen for the project for several reasons, primarily location. The site is relatively close to the Phoenix airport and two interstate highways as well as a proposed “NAFTA superhighway,” planned to stretch from Mexico to Canada and connecting the nations involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Manufacturers in PhoenixMart will have 600 square feet of show- room space to display products.
The complex will be organized by category with different sections for home and hotel, industrial and auto, electronics and accessories, food and beverage, office and recreation, and fashion and variety.
The complex will feature a “high design element” and each of the six categories will be housed separately, connected by walkways with shaded outdoor areas. Each section will feature a grand entrance, Schoenfelder said.
Company executives are finishing up permitting and design of the complex, he said.
PhoenixMart’s sister company, Az Outlet Investments — Az Sourcing is the holding company for both — also plans to develop the outlet mall near Jimmie Kerr Boulevard and the 34 acres behind it in a complementary project to the
wholesale sourcing center. Schoenfelder said development plans for the area include taking the PhoenixMart wholesale concept and using it for retail at the Jimmie Kerr Boulevard site.
AZ Outlet Investments has rebranded the former outlet mall as Home Center Factory Direct and hopes to build behind it a 110-foot hotel, 165-foot apartment complex, a six-level parking garage, a four- story anchor store and several retail and office buildings with heights up to 75 feet.
“There is no sense of entry in Casa Grande — we want to make that part of town a showpiece that says, ‘Hey, you’ve arrived in Casa Grande,’” Schoenfelder said.
