One North Fifth opens doors at ex-MLK site

One North Fifth Apartments give University of Arizona junior Kimberly Thomas just what she’s looking for: a six-story high rise, Hotel Congress across the street, her job at the soon-to-open On a Roll two blocks away.

Also, UA is a scooter or free shuttle ride away.

“It’s the closest thing to living in a big city,” said Thomas, 24, a double major in deaf studies and political science.

The first eight or nine tenants moved in over the weekend at One North Fifth, 1 N. Fifth Ave., a new urban contemporary reinterpretation from what an architect called the “brutalist box” of the former Martin Luther King Jr. Apartments. Leases are signed for 11 of 96 apartments and 30 have pre-lease deposits, said Justin Cohen, the leasing manager.

Thomas is a couple of weeks away from moving in, but was enchanted while touring her one-bedroom apartment, which includes a video intercom for the street door (“no way,” she said excitedly) and a dishwasher (“I can’t believe I have a dishwasher”) and plenty of space for her. (“Oh, it’s excellent. I was in a studio before.”)

“It’s better than I could have imagined,” Thomas said. “It’s more spacious than I thought. For the record, my friends are going to be jealous.”

Studios of about 425 square feet rent for $625 to $750 per month, and 625-square-foot, one-bedroom apartments rent for $750 to $870 per month, Cohen said.

One North Fifth also has 11 affordable housing apartments on the second floor renting for $481 to $588 per month for people earning less than $23,100 per year, Cohen said.

While other downtown housing projects hit varied stumbling blocks, Williams & Dame Development came from Portland, Ore., saw downtown, partnered with local real estate company Peach Properties and summarily started and finished converting the former MLK into One North Fifth.

It is the first multistory housing to open downtown since the same building was built in 1970 as the MLK Apartments. Before that, the nine-story Redondo Towers, 425 W. Paseo Redondo, from 1961 was the other downtown residential tower, said Ann Vargas, project supervisor in the city Community Services Department.

“This adds to the middle gap in that it’s rental and not condo,” Vargas said. “There’s high-end and low-end downtown, but we have a deficit in the middle. One North Fifth is a big move in that direction.”

Erwin Chan, 29, a visiting assistant linguistics professor at UA, said two colleagues in the linguistics department who live downtown recommended One North to him. The neighborhoods around UA did not appeal to Chan.

“The price is good,” Chan said. “I paid exactly the same price as in Philadelphia and I get a bigger apartment and a nice view. It’s a new place. It’s right next to the transportation center.”

Chan said an eight-minute bus ride gets him to UA.

One North Fifth is the first completed project for Depot Plaza, for which Williams & Dame/Peach will build a second five-story, market-rate apartment tower. And, the city Community Services Department will build a new Martin Luther King Jr. Apartments with 68 units for low-income seniors and the disabled behind One North Fifth.

The city originally planned to tear down the original MLK, but Williams & Dame/Peach decided the existing block building provided a solid base to upgrade public housing for low-income seniors and the disabled into urban, contemporary housing for students, professionals or empty nesters desiring a simpler lifestyle.

“We took a big, ugly, late 60s brutalist box,” downtown architect Rob Paulus said. “It had a dingy, prisonlike feel to it. We took out as many walls as we could. It completely opened up the space.”

Carpets and drop ceilings were removed, creating new apartments with concrete floors, 8-foot-9-inch ceilings and exposed piping overhead. Paulus stripped away vertical concrete balcony slabs, replaced 6-foot-8-inch sliding glass doors with 8-foot-8-inch high glass doors, and he took out the walls separating the kitchen from the living room in each apartment “to completely open up the space.”

“We wanted to lighten it as much as possible,” Paulus said. “Taking the concrete balcony off opens it from the outside and lets more light in.”

Williams & Dame chairman Homer Williams came to Tucson in early 2006 to attend a streetcar conference. While here, he took a look downtown, and by summer Peach Properties owner Ron Schwabe had pointed him to the city’s MLK redevelopment. The original idea was for condos, but Schwabe, whose firm manages about 700 downtown and midtown apartments, convinced Williams that the market was better for apartments.

By fall 2006, Williams & Dame/Peach had a development agreement with the city. They started work in October 2007 – and that late only because the city had to wait for federal approval to sell the former public housing structure to Williams & Dame for $375,000.

Williams & Dame took on downtown Tucson after playing a leading role in creating the 5,000-home Pearl District on an abandoned rail yard near downtown Portland and building 1,500 condos in the South Park area of Los Angeles near the Staples Center.

“They’re urban pioneers,” Schwabe said. “That’s the biggest thing. They’re not deterred by a lot of the normal stuff.”

Tucson developers acknowledged that Williams & Dame’s experience with urban development elsewhere enabled them to move quickly in Tucson.

“People that have already been through redevelopment can see what it takes to make something happen,” said Jerry Dixon, patriarch of the family developing the Mercado District of Menlo Park and a neighboring 14.3-acre lot on West Congress Street. “There is still great skepticism to downtown among local developers. I visited with Homer Williams. He told me the Pearl District was in worse condition 20 years ago than our downtown.”

Richard Oseran, who owns Hotel Congress across Fifth Avenue from One North Fifth, said Williams & Dame/Peach was smart to recognize the need for inexpensive apartments.

“They used their expertise to move forward,” Oseran said. “I think at the time (in 2006) a lot of people looking at projects were blinded by rising residential prices and building costs. If you thought about it, and unfortunately nobody thought about it (except Williams & Dame), there’s a dramatic need for affordable rental housing.”

Schwabe said it was much easier to finance apartments than condos.

“Financing is everything,” Schwabe said. “The big part of that is it’s apartments, not condos.”

Along with the former MLK apartments, Williams & Dame/Peach Properties also bought the commercial strip across the street, 256-278 E. Congress St., and the parking lot behind those buildings stretching to Broadway. They intend to build multistory housing there, and Williams & Dame is also scoping out the warehouse arts district for potential projects.

“Most developers here don’t understand the concept of building a community,” architect Rob Paulus said. “(Williams & Dame) understand the fact it’s not just one project. Out here everybody thinks of a 1-to-3-year process. It’s a 10- to 20-year process.”

Downtown developer Michael Keith also credits Williams & Dame’s ability to read the Tucson market as well as the economy.

“They identified the one type of project that could be done in this type of market,” Keith said. “They have a long-term vision for the area. it worked for them more than it might for others.”

Williams & Dame/Peach had the advantage of an existing building, but many times older buildings are not much of an advantage.

“Existing buildings are usually trickier than new construction,” Peach Properties owner Ron Schwabe said. “This has been no exception. You have a lot of new surprises every day.”

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ON THE WEB

onenorthfifth.com

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