By J. Graber | Daily Independent
The fourth time was the charm for the once embattled Mercado Village multifamily home project near the intersection of 92nd Street and Shea Boulevard where an empty office building now stands.
After failing three other times over as many years to get approval from the Scottsdale City Council for a rezoning request to allow the project, Scottsdale-based developer Caliber finally got the approval it needed during the council’s Dec. 4 meeting.
But after years of making concessions to residents angry over the project, Caliber made one final change that may have pushed the project past the finish line – instead of apartments for rent, all of the units will now be condos for sale.
That final switch seemed to be enough to quiet public outcry for the project as there were only two public speakers on the proposal and both of them were in favor of it.
“I feel like we’re delivering a project that as a resident of Scottsdale and a business owner of Scottsdale, we’re really proud of,” Caliber founder and CEO Chris Loeffler said after the meeting. “I think we went from a council meeting in December of 2022 with at least 20 people speaking against the project to today with none. I feel like it was a good process.”
The project, which is located adjacent to HonorHealth’s Scottsdale Shea campus, has seen many revisions over the years to things like the number of units it would have (as high as 340 units at one point), how tall it would be and whether or not there would be retail included in it – not to mention it has gone by several different names as well.
The current iteration calls for a two-story building along 92nd street which goes to three stories in the back of the property. The count right now is at 235 living units, but Kurt Jones, an attorney for the project, predicted that number would probably drop even more because condos tend to be bigger than apartments.
The development also includes:
- Eight live-work units
- 5,000 square feet of co-working space
- A traffic light at 92nd Street and Cochise Drive paid for by Caliber
- Nearly three times the required open space.
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