Tempe approves apartment complex geared toward working from home

By Lindsay Walker
Twitter: @AzNewsmedia

An apartment complex built for the post-pandemic world is making its way to Tempe after receiving unanimous approval from the city council. 

The Dwell:Work@Home Community was approved in a 7-0 vote during the Feb. 10 city council meeting. Boasting 129 units of studio and one-bedroom apartments, the complex will be geared toward the workforce and especially those who work from home. 

The project at 430 South Farmer Avenue is being developed by Holualoa Cos., which has offices in Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, Paris and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. 

“Holualoa believes there is strong need for attainably priced rental housing to fill the huge ‘missing middle’ between all the high-end housing and the government subsidized affordable housing, especially for workers who most predict will work from home part-time or full-time into the foreseeable future given choice by employers, and particularly with all the tech, finance and creative jobs we are attracting to the Valley,” said Steve Betts,managing director of development at Holualoa Cos. 

Betts is hoping this Tempe prototype turns into dozens of similar builds. In fact, he said Holualoa has identified and acquired a second site for such a project in Phoenix’s Biltmore area, which is walkable to shopping, restaurants and jobs.  

Betts said it’s important to place workforce housing in urban areas as so many developers are working on affordable or luxury housing projects, leaving out a large group of people who make modest salaries. 

“Our Dwell product is particularly important to a city like Tempe, or Phoenix, because of its predominant urban density and land prices which makes workforce or attainable housing very difficult to build at today’s construction costs without significant government assistance,” he said. “Dwell is ‘workforce-housing-by-design’, to be purpose built to achieve attainable or workforce rental rates, even on a small urban parcel. 

The first of its kind, each unit in the complex will have built-in desks and some units will have small offices residents can retreat to. The complex itself will have meeting or Zoom rooms if residents need to get out of the unit but still want to get work done onsite.

The complex will not have a pool or other high-end amenities, preferring to make downtown Tempe the main attraction, though it will have necessities such as a fitness center and dog run. Finishes will still be of great quality inside each unit, according to Betts, but won’t price people like teachers or police officers out of living there. 

Initially delayed by the pandemic, the time off allowed Betts to re-evaluate what the area needed and develop the work-from-home concept. 

The project had its first public hearing at the city council meeting on Jan. 13. At that time, Betts and Darin Sender, whose Sender Associates was the applicant for the project with the council, said the goal was to make apartments affordable for someone who makes $50,000 to $70,000.

Studios are set to start at $1,500 per month, one-bedrooms will start at $1,675 and one-bedrooms with a built-in office will be $1,900 according to the plans Betts and Sender presented.

On Feb. 10, most councilmembers expressed enthusiasm for the unique project and Tempe being the guinea pig for a timely idea. 

“The beauty about this thing is that it’s driven by a private developer making this happen,” said Councilmember Joel Navarro. “The market is there for affordability. The fact that they’re doing it in a downtown area is just a beautiful thing.” 

Mayor Corey Woods said he hoped the project would remove the “ugly, negative stigma” around workforce housing. 

But others had questions. At least one Tempe resident called into the virtual meeting to question the pavement being used by the developer in the parking lot. 

Betts and his team assured the group the project is using permeable pavement in order to reduce the heat island effect experienced in most downtown areas. 

Councilmember Robin Arredondo-Savage expressed some misgivings about the project because there is no guarantee the complex will remain affordable for the city’s workforce in the future. But, she said she would be supporting the project because she wants to see how it will flow in the neighborhood. 

For Betts, the approval means his passion project will see the light of day. 

“Creating an attainably priced rental product on a small urban site, especially in expensive areas like downtown Tempe, and with rising construction costs today, is not easy,” he said. “But this concept and project has been a test-case, a bit of a labor of love for our community, and an effort to ‘do well by doing good.’