Tempe – Liberty Property Trust in Malvern, Pa. (NYSE:LRY, John DiVall, city mgr. for Arizona region) plans to develop a 100,000-square-foot speculative back-office building to kick off construction of a 100-acre mixed-use business park in Tempe. The company has a development agreement in place with the City of Tempe to serve as master developer for the property, which is at the northwest corner of Priest Road and Rio Salado Parkway. The project, being called Liberty Center at Rio Salado, is being planned for a mixture of uses, including office, flex, industrial, retail and hotel. In all, Liberty Property Trust expects to develop about 800,000 sq. ft. of office and industrial space within the business park. Liberty Property Trust is purchasing the land from Tempe in phased purchases that should net the City about $12 million. Last month, the City approved the sale of the first 80 acres of land at Priest and Rio Salado Parkway.
Elliott Pollack of Elliott D. Pollack & Company had this to say: This is a good indication of how far perceptions of the Greater Phoenix nonresidential real estate market have come. This indicates both short and long term confidence in a market that still has relatively high vacancy rates. The near term development of spec back-office space shows two things. First, that Liberty thinks the continued growth prospects of the area warrant a long term commitment. Second, that a the long term outlook is so good that it warrants being one of the first to build a spec back-office building early in the recovery. Not a bad message.
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