Plans for the construction of a massive multi-use development in Scottsdale, Arizona, the center of which would be the new headquarters of taser manufacturer Axon Enterprise remain very much on hold. In January members of the Scottsdale Airport Advisory Commission rejected the plan for the project in a unanimous 7 to 0 vote, suggesting that it was not fully thought out. Subsequently, in late February in an earnings call with investors, Rick Smith, Axon chief executive officer, described Scottsdale leaders as “anti-development.” The company in the summer of 2023 had proposed building not only a 400,000-square-foot corporate office, but a larger campus of 27 acres on the north side of the city. According to the initial plans for the project, that campus would also include up to 1,900 multifamily residential units, along with a 100-room hotel, and half a dozen 5-story buildings for retail. Axon had earlier indicated that it planned to spend upwards of $85 million on the project. The proposal has met with opposition from nearby residents who have said they don’t want a project that large near their neighborhoods, specifically mentioning concerns about increased traffic. Members of the Airport Advisory Commission, notes the Scottsdale Progress newspaper, said the size and scope of the project “would not be just an intrusive nuisance to the neighbors who are protesting it, but an existential threat to the Scottsdale Airport.” Matters have been further muddied after Scottsdale City Attorney Sherry Scott complained about an Axon executive contacting the employer of a member of the city Planning Commission. Remarked Axon's Smith: “This public spectacle is having a chilling effect on both our interest in staying in Scottsdale, and surely other employers are watching how this is being handled.” When asked during the earnings call when Axon may actually make a final decision on pursuing the campus project, Smith remarked, “We hope to have a decision by sometime this summer.” Founded in 1993 as Air Taser Incorporated, the company was rebranded as Axon in 2017, emerging in subsequent years as the largest supplier in the country of weapons products, body cameras, and a cloud-based digital evidence platform. Despite the controversy over the Scottsdale campus project, Axon saw revenue in 2023 of $1.5 billion, up by 31% over the previous year’s numbers. By Garry Boulard
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Funding has been secured on the state level for a project that will see the construction of a new police station in the city of Farmington. Members of the New Mexico State Legislature have approved a capital outlay of $3 million to get the facility built, one of nearly fifty projects approved for San Juan County. Altogether, lawmakers, and subsequently Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, gave a thumbs-up to nearly $28 million in new projects for the state's most northwestern county. Those projects include the replacement of a main water tank in the city of Aztec, which is receiving $2.5 million; and the replacement of a Bloomfield Irrigation District siphon, securing just over $2.9 million in funding. Other San Juan big ticket items: the construction of a new dorm for Navajo Preparatory School in Farmington, with $1.9 million in funding; $1 million for the building of an incident command center in Shiprock; and $840,000 for the building of a heating and cooling system at the San Juan Regional Medical Center, also in Farmington. Just under $2 million is going for the improvements to County Road 4990, which runs east to west through the city of Bloomfield. By Garry Boulard Discount shoppers will soon be left with one less option in the wake of a just-announced decision calling for the closing of nearly 1,000 Family Dollar locations nationally. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based chain will see at least 600 of its stores closed by this summer, and another 370 locations in the months to come. The announcement comes after parent company Dollar Tree released fourth quarter numbers showing a net loss of $1.7 billion, a particularly stark figure, considering that in the final quarter of 2022 Family Dollar posted net earnings of $452 million. At the same time, according to the site Yahoo!Finance, Family Dollar foot traffic last month was only up by a marginal 0.5%, while Dollar Tree saw an increase of 8.3% and Dollar General was up by 8.4%. Launched in 1959, Family Dollar, offering a wide variety of discounted items, experienced remarkable growth beginning in the 1970s. As of 2015, the chain had more than 8,000 stores nationally. Also, during 2015, the chain was purchased by the even larger Dollar Tree Incorporated, which has its offices in Chesapeake, Virginia, and operates more than 16,700 stores. Upon release of the latest quarter numbers, Rick Dreiling, chief executive officer of Dollar Tree, noted that overall numbers for the larger company were positive: "We finished the year strong, with fourth quarter results reflecting positive trends, market share gains, and adjusted margin improvement across both sectors." But while Dollar Tree posted a 6.3% gain in the most recent quarter, continued the company statement, Family Dollar was off by 1.2%. In an earnings call, Dreiling referenced the Family Dollar closings by remarking: "We took a thoughtful and deliberate approach to address underperforming stores by considering each store's performance, local operating environment, and our broader need for scale and operating efficiencies across the portfolio." Analysts say Family Dollar was hit by a confluence of changes in consumer habits after the Covid 19 outbreak, significantly increased theft rates, and a $42 million fine after the company was forced to close down a distribution center due to rat infestation. Exactly which Family Dollar stores - which typically measure between 6,000 and 8,000 square feet - will close has not yet been announced. The company currently has around 30 locations each in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. By Garry Boulard A plan is moving forward for the construction of a new multi-million-dollar fire station in Colorado Springs that will go up on the growing north side of the city. What will be officially designated as Station Number 24 will go up on a 4.7-acre site at the intersection of New Life Drive and Interquest Parkway. Members of the city's Planning Commission have now given their approval to rezoning the site in question for the project, which has been in the talking stage for the last 3 years. The proposed 12,000-square-foot facility will include a bay area, kitchen, lounging space for firefighters, restrooms, and office space. It is thought that it may cost upwards to $10 million to build the structure. The Colorado Springs Fire Department has purchased for some $550,000 the land needed to build the station from a residential development known as La Plata Communities. According to city records, a move towards building a new station on the north side was spurred as a result of a "significant amount of new construction that was already underway and planned in that area of the community." As planned, the new facility will provide coverage for what is currently an 8-mile gap on the north side of the city that is not immediately served by a fire station. Colorado Springs has seen a population jump of around 12% in the last two decades, from 360,000 to more than 486,000. A large chunk of that growth, at better than 15%, has taken place on the north side. By Garry Boulard Construction could begin next year on a plan to significantly expand an iconic and historic school in Snowmass Village, Colorado. Opened in 1894, the Little Red Schoolhouse is located at 4598 Owl Creek Road and has served as an operating school facility for generations of area residents. The wood-framed building is topped by a bell tower on a site that also includes a rear one-story wooden garage and has in recent years served as the home to a childcare and early childhood education center. No matter what its function, the much-photographed building has remained a residential and tourist favorite, reminiscent of an era when such structures, beginning in the early 19th century, served as the primary educational facilities in small communities across the country. Now a plan is underway to expand the Snowmass site with a 7,500-square-foot, two-story structure to the rear of the school that will house up to five classrooms, office and lobby space, a laundry room, and kitchen. The old schoolhouse itself, according to plans, will be repurposed for community space purposes with a library, science center, and music area. The Denver-based Alan Ford Architects has been brought in as project designer. The project is expected to cost around $8 million to complete and will be funded out of the Snowmass Village’s unreserved fund balance for fiscal year 2025. A columnist for Vermont’s Brattleboro Reformer newspaper in 1916 noted that all little red schoolhouses, as well as barns, were reflective of New England thriftiness as “red was the cheapest kind of paint.” By Garry Boulard Nearly $19 billion in federal funding has now been approved for a variety of military base construction projects across the country. As signed into law by President Biden, the Certified Appropriations Act of 2024 includes funding that is around $2 billion more than originally requested, with Army projects getting the biggest funding increase at $1 billion. A request for Air Force construction appropriations saw a budget increase of $808 million. Only the Navy got less than expected, with Congress approving an appropriation than is $161 million smaller than requested. The projects to be funded by the appropriations legislation cover everything from family base housing to childcare facilities, offices, and military equipment facilities. A report issued by the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute reviewing the appropriations legislation notes that the legislation is "extremely important" for the simple reason that such projects cannot be funded via a Congressional continuing resolution. With budget talks at a standstill since last spring, the report continues: "Six months of construction time has already been lost, time that can never be recovered and time that will likely result in higher construction costs due to inflation and unpredictability in planning." Additional projects to be funded under the legislation include new facilities for training, supplies, maintenance, utilities, and research and development space. Funding to the tune of $45 million has also been secured for a large number of base demolition projects. A House document states that "excess infrastructure can be costly to maintain and diverts resources away from current requirements." By Garry Boulard A roughly century-old building in downtown Gilbert that has long housed a popular auto repair shop may soon be extensively repurposed as a restaurant. Located at the intersection of N. Gilbert Road and Cullumber Avenue, the one-story L-shaped building encompasses around 10,000 square feet and includes a four-bay garage. Plans are now calling for the development of a what will be a nearly 5, 500-square foot- restaurant in the former Clement's Auto Repair building, along with a 5,000-square-foot front patio, and a roughly 1,200-square-foot mezzanine. A unique visual feature of the project, reports the Arizona Republic, will be a "1930s-era car fuel station-inspired canopy." Retail space in a separate section of the structure will comprise some 3,400 square feet. The building was purchased two years ago for nearly $3 million by local investors Scott and Haleigh Bigelow. Located in the city's Heritage District, Clement's Auto Repair, which also served as a Mobil Gas station, proved beyond a doubt an enduring business having opened in 1934 and only ending operations in early 2022. If all goes as anticipated, work on the repurposing of the building will begin sometime this summer. By Garry Boulard In an industry where new and not-so-new hotels are constantly being listed for sale, a two-day auction has been announced for April 1 for a 44-room hotel in northeastern Colorado. Located at 1208 N. Colorado Avenue in the city of Brush, the hotel, which was built in 1967 and is branded as a Rodeway Inn, is designated as a Class C building, measuring around 20,500 square feet. With two stories, the L-shaped hotel features a swimming pool and underwent a partial renovation two years ago. The auctioning off and selling of hotel properties has become a big business for investors. The website Axios reported last summer than nearly 460 such properties were sold in just the year of 2022 alone, significantly up from 160 in 2013. Investors tend to like such properties for their redevelopment potential, turning them into multi-family and student apartment complexes. Cities have also gotten into the act, buying former hotels with the goal of repurposing them for affordable and workforce housing. An additional reason for such sales, according to the publication GlobeSt: some hotel owners want to get out from underneath forced “deferred capital expenditure refurbishments” mandated by the hotel brand. The 1208 N. Colorado Avenue property, which was formerly branded as a Best Western, sits on a just under 2-acre site. The auction for the hotel, listed by Prime Investment Properties, which has offices in Steamboat Springs, begins with a starting bid of $450,000. Prime Investment specializes in the selling of hospitality properties particularly in the West. By Garry Boulard The Department of Transportation’s discretionary grant program has been in every way historic: some $661 billion in road, bridge, airport, port, and rail projects have been funded as a result of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. “The investment level and volume of new competitive initiatives far exceeds previous transportation bills,” Washington Democrat Representative Rick Larsen remarked during a recent hearing. That hearing, conducted by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, was tasked with looking at how well, or not so well, discretionary grant programs sponsored by the Department of Transportation have fared. In looking at the program, Larsen noted that more than 1,000 local safety projects have thus far received funding, not to mention nearly 240 rail projects, and the building and developing of 69 passenger rail corridors. But other members of the committee, as well as local officials offering testimony, have claimed that the grant process has often proven complicated and lengthy. Alan Winders, appearing for the National Association of Counties, noted that Audrain County in Missouri has repeatedly failed to secure funding through the Transportation Department’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant program for a local highway project. According to a released issued by the committee, Audrain County has been “unsuccessful in its grant application for six years,” subject to “inconsistent determinations and changing grant criteria.” Contending that grant award delays have contributed to hundreds of millions of dollars in project cost overruns, Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue remarked: “This is not an efficient, effective way to deliver infrastructure,” while adding that some local stakeholders in the Sunshine State have simply decided not to pursue federal funds because of those delays. Republican Sam Graves, chairman of the committee, noted that one recipient of a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant has not only been forced to comply with 75 federal laws and regulations, but must also “certify compliance with 12 executive orders.” “These additional criteria may exclude otherwise qualified projects from receiving federal funding for worthwhile infrastructure improvements,” added Graves. The committee hearings come two months after the Government Accounting Office, in a report, took the Transportation Department to task for, among other things, not fully revealing why some projects were chosen for grant funding and other weren't. By Garry Boulard Some two years after the City of El Paso decided against building a multi-purpose arena in a historic neighborhood called Duranguito, a move is underway to restore some of the structures in that same neighborhood. Not long after plans for the arena were announced in the fall of 2016 a series of lawsuits were filed to stop the project, arguing that as a historic neighborhood, Duranguito should be preserved. In 2022 the City withdrew its plans for putting the structure in Duranguito. In recent months a proposal has been studied calling for the arena to go up instead on a site near the old downtown Union Depot station. Meanwhile, the City has been trying to decide what to do with nearly two dozen structures it had earlier purchased in Duranguito. To that end, a Request for Information may soon be issued asking for input on what to do with those structures. The RFI notes that structures in the area could be subject to adaptive reuse, a process that may include the "renovation and rehabilitation of an existing building with a transformation of use." The RFI has a submission deadline of March 29. Historians say Duranguito's roots reach back to the mid-19th century. Most of the one and two-story structures still in existence were built between the 1890s and 1920s. In 2016, the El Paso Times noted that Duranguito is the site of the city's "last-standing former brothel, a fire station designed by famed architect Henry Trost, the home of a lawyer who arranged Pancho Villa's surrender, and a former Chinese laundry dated to 1900." By Garry Boulard |
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