$1.7-Mil Land Sale Triggers Tramonto's First Retail Project

Phoenix-based Denro Commercial is planning an early 2002 ground-breaking and October 2002 delivery on the neighborhood center, which calls for a 55,000-sf Albertsons/Osco and 40,000 sf of inline space. But that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg: Denro also controls a 40-acre tract right across the road, earmarked for a power center.

"We've been working on this two years and it's finally come to fruition," Dave Newquist, a senior vice president for CB Richard Ellis Inc.'s Phoenix office, tells GlobeSt.com. "We're now ready to move on."

The first phase will be positioned on 14 acres, including the Albertsons/Osco tract. The center will take up the northeast corner of Interstate 17 and Carefree Highway.

The project's pre-leasing is ready to kick off and there already are a half dozen of letters of intent flying around for the inline space, according to Newquist.

Denro Commercial–by virtue of its parent company and Tramonto's developer Community Southwest–controls all the developable retail acreage in Tramonto, a community of custom and traditional single-family homes. The power center development is still a couple years out, says Newquist. He and first vice president Ron Ault are leasing the project and represented both sides of the deal in the $1.7-million land sale to Albertsons.

Andrews Design Group of Phoenix is the architect for the first retail phase. MT Builders, also of Phoenix, is the general contractor.

The project also will put Denro in the relatively unique position of having three neighborhood centers simultaneously coming out of the ground. Denro is building an Albertsons-anchored center at the intersection of Ray and McClintock in Tempe and a Fry's-anchored project at the Village at Eagle Mountain along Shea Boulevard in Fountain Hills.