courtesy of By Liviu Oltean, Associate Editor, MHN online
Susan Eastridge, CEO of Concord Eastridge
In a milestone for the $350 million USA Place project in Tempe, the developers and Arizona State University officials have reached agreement on a 99-year lease for a site near the school’s campus. The deal paves the way for a December groundbreaking.
Located on an 11-acre site on the east side of Mill Avenue, USA Place will consist of a 220-room Omni Hotel, a 4,500-seat event center, a 30,000-square-foot conference center, 500 luxury apartments, 160,000 square feet of retail, and up to 200,000 square feet of office space, as CPE reported in August 2013. USA Place will also be the future headquarters of USA Basketball, the national governing body for men’s and women’s basketball.
The development team, USA Place L.L.C., is led by Susan Eastridge, CEO of Concord Eastridge; Michael Hallmark, co-founder of Future Cities, the project’s master planner; and Robert Harris, CEO of Harris Sports & Entertainment. Their initial plan was a phased build-out, but that is no longer the case, as the The Arizona Republic reported.
“This is an exciting and an incredible opportunity that offers nothing but positives for USA Basketball,” said USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo in an statement. “USA Place will offer USA Basketball an excellent site for the development of its office headquarters, a training center and event center that will provide the organization with a first-class site for hosting junior level events and will allow USA Basketball to continue to evolve.”