Biltmore Fashion Park Scouting Mixed-Use Prospects

PHOENIX-The Taubman Co., owner of the Biltmore Fashion Park, is toying with the addition of extra retail space, office towers, hotel and condominiums.

The upscale Biltmore Fashion Park is strategically positioned at the most prestigious intersections in the region. “We are thinking about the Biltmore Fashion Park as an urban mixed-use project that would have elements, when it’s done, of retail, office, residential and possibly a hotel,” Gary Doyle, general manager of 700,000-sf center tells GlobeSt.com. “We are not the developers of all those component parts, so we have sought input and advice from other developers who may or may not be interested in proceeding with us.”

The plans are far too preliminary to have the details of just how much would be added and where on the site, Doyle says. Market demand will dictate just when and if the additions are made, he says.

The Biltmore Fashion Park sits at the northeast corner of 24th Street and Camelback Road, considered by many to be the center point of the Valley’s business community. Much of the Valley’s financial, real estate brokerage, financial operations and other professional service firms lease office space in the nearby towers, which are on every other corner of the intersection and mostly filled to capacity. Office space along the Camelback Corridor, and especially at the Biltmore intersection, command the highest lease rate in town, fetching about $26 per sf.

“We are the only piece that is not zoned in accordance with the city’s overall plans for the area,” Doyle says. “This area and in particular the four corners, as it matures from a real estate standpoint over a period of year, would be able to accommodate more office buildings, more retail, a third department store, possibly a hotel and possibly some luxury condominiums.”

Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s anchor Biltmore Fashion Park. Incorporating additions into the parcel would require a carefully crafted design that doesn’t diminish the quality of the revered park, Doyle says. “We would have the opportunity to do a truly creative mixed-use project, that has retail at the heart of it, not grafted onto some office building or done as an afterthought,” he says. “We have the nicest human space in the city of Phoenix for retail and we do not want to mess that up.”

On the intersection’s southeast corner, the Camelback Esplanade has added more and more retail space over the years in a blend of specialty shops, restaurants and a multi-screen movie theater. “We want to do something architecturally interesting and appropriate,” Doyle says. “We are not interested in double-decking and enclosing the center and making it a one million-sf regional shopping center. This is a life-style center, an alternative to everything else in town.”

Doyle says additions could be placed just about anywhere on the parcel. Additional parking, which is already tight at the center, would have to come in the form of underground parking and addition vertical parking in the rear of the property. Taubman purchased the Biltmore Fashion Park in 1994 for $109.5 million from a partnership of Phoenix-based Grossman Co. Properties and Hartford, CT-based Aetna Life and Casualty.