GILBERT NEWS: Surrounded by 35 acres of dirt, weeds and mud puddles from an early-morning rainstorm, a massive steel crane hoists building materials into place at the new Veterans Affairs clinic under construction near Val Vista Drive and Pecos Road in Gilbert. From the clinic site in the center of the town’s developing central business district, a smattering of mid-rise buildings are visible — hotels, office towers and a hospital. Someday, this area could be home to a modest Gilbert skyline. As construction accelerates again in Gilbert, the town has more than 1,600 vacant acres designated as potential land for multilevel commercial development. Gilbert’s code restricts building height to one to three stories for most areas, but the Town Council in 2008 created five “vertical development overlay” districts that in some cases allow for buildings as high as 11 stories, or 150 feet in height. In the central Loop 202 business district — home to SanTan Village mall, Mercy Gilbert Medical Center and three hotels — commercial buildings are automatically allowed to reach six stories and can extend five floors higher with Council approval. In order to qualify for the maximum height allowances, developers are encouraged to submit projects that go above and beyond in offering a diverse mix of uses, more amenities and desirable infrastructure improvements. That could include residential lofts, hotels with full-service restaurants or conference centers and underground parking garages, according to the Land Development Code. Public plazas, pedestrian amenities and environmentally friendly design can also help a development proposal win permission for taller buildings, the code says. So far, mid-rise development in Gilbert has been limited, and that could be because the region has generally attracted more technology firms that want to locate in business parks without the need for multilevel buildings, economic development Director Dan Henderson said. Still, Gilbert officials expect to see more mid-rise buildings pop up around Banner Gateway Medical Center and in the central business district, along the Santan Freeway east of Gilbert Road and south of Ray Road. The town’s incentive agreement with Nationwide Realty Investors, which plans to build about 3.1 million square feet of office space at Rivulon near Gilbert and Pecos roads, encourages taller, denser development, Henderson said. A preliminary Phase 1 site plan depicted a four-story, 120,000-square-foot office building closest to the Santan Freeway, two additional two-story office buildings and several other buildings that could house restaurants, small businesses and larger anchor tenants. Overall, Gilbert has about 9.8 million square feet of retail space, 13 percent of which is vacant, according to a town report. About 15 percent of the town’s 6.9 million square feet of industrial space and 26 percent of its 3.4 million square feet of office space is vacant, the report says.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 18:03:22 +0000
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