February 2010

Oakville Grocery to open at CityScape in September

The search has been on for the last few months to find a Grocery Store to replace AJ’s who had to back out of the project due to the Bankruptcy filing of their parent company Basha’s.  The search is now over as an announcement was made Monday by RED Development Partner Mike Ebert, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and Barbara Henderson, general manager of Oakville Grocery, a company that has it’s roots in a country store that started 120 years ago.

Oakville, headquartered in Napa Valley, California will open it’s second store in Arizona in a 9,000 sq ft space at CityScape.  The company’s first store in Arizona, opened in Scottsdale in January of this year. 

Henderson said shoppers can except to find a wide selection of palate-pleasing delights, including products from 15 local purveyors.

Source: Phoenix Business Journal

Primal Fitness Training comes to Downtown Phoenix

The Downtown Phoenix Warehouse District is now home to an innovative Fitness Training Studio.  The AmenZone is now open for business at 106 E Buchanan St.  The idea behind owner/trainer Amen Iseghohi’s training approach is to be “totally natural”.  Shunning the weight room, Amen’s unique approach uses recycled tires and one’s own body strength and movement to stay fit.

The fitness studio is in a very cool, renovated warehouse space with gated parking in the rear of the building. 

 

Check out the class schedule                                                     

Phoenix real estate prices close to the bottom

 For the first time in a few years, we are starting to see encouraging articles appear in the local media about our real estate market.  This past week, I actually see three separate articles in a two day span with good news. 
 
The first article was titled “Pending home sales, prices on the rise” .  This article appeared in the Phoenix Business Journal.    The article quotes local real estate market analyst Michael Orr.  Orr, author of the Cromford Report, said that the January rise in pending home sales is a critical recovery indicator for Arizona’s real estate market.  Orr said the latest report shows pending sales in the Metro Phoenix area hit a record 9,883 in the first week of January 2010 – a 79 percent increase over the 5,350 from a year ago.
 
The second article, also in the Phoenix Business Journal, stated that Phoenix home values were up 1.1% from October of 2009 to November of 2009.
 
The third article, written by J. Craig Anderson at azcentral.com, quoted Arizona State University professor Karl Guntermann who publishes the monthly ASU Repeat Sales Index housing report.  Guntermann said, for the first time since the foreclosure crisis began, the price of a Phoenix area foreclosed home was roughly the same as it was a year ago.  Guntermann said that in December, based on early numbers, the annual decline in price was down to 2%.  That does not hold true for the non-foreclosure market which is still declining at an annual rate of 20% according to Guntermann. 
 
Signs are beginning to point to the possibility that we could start seeing a slight and slow recovery in local real estate values in 2010.