Central Phoenix trailer park to be replaced with housing to serve the 'missing middle'
Housing, offices and a small-scale restaurant or cafe are part of a proposed redevelopment in central Phoenix on a site that used to include a mobile home park.
Phoenix-based Venue Projects bought the 2.5-acre site at 14th Place and Highland Avenue in 2017, Lorenzo Perez, co-founder of Venue Projects, said.
“My business partner, Jon Kitchell, and his wife live in that neighborhood,” Perez said. “For years, Jon had been trying to acquire the park. He was drawn to the old 1950s trailers on the site.”
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Modern mobile home park was the hope
When they bought the park, Venue Projects had intended to rehabilitate the site as a trailer park, with modern trailers, Perez said. The development’s name, Wonderview on Highland, is based off the former trailer park’s name, Wonderview.
However, he said, city codes have long discouraged the development of new mobile home parks, and any improvements done to the site would trigger costly infrastructure improvements, such as widening 14th Place. The added expense can make a use like a trailer park too cost prohibitive because it won’t generate enough revenue to offset those costs.
Across the Valley, the sale and redevelopment of trailer parks have raised concerns with the loss of an affordable housing option offered by the parks. Often, residents own the structure but rent the land, so when a park is sold they can become displaced. Several trailer park closures near Grand Canyon University in Phoenix prompted the state to adjust rules for compensation for people who need to move or abandon their mobile homes.
Since the beginning of 2021, at least 30 trailer, manufactured and mobile home parks have sold for almost $260 million, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of real estate records. Wonderview, which was purchased in 2017, is not included in that total.
From 2017 to 2022, Venue Projects operated the park with the remaining residents and ended up buying many of the trailers on the site. Perez said the company spent about a year and half working with the residents to sell or relocate their trailers.
The buildings that remained on the site have since been demolished.
“We came up with an idea to generate more density to offset the significant cost,” Perez said. Instead of trailers, Venue Projects is proposing 42 residential units on the site, which would be a mix of one-story duplexes and two-story buildings with eight units each. The residential portion would include a community pool.
“We have a strong interest in the ‘missing middle’ housing,” Perez said. “We want to do a project that shows you can integrate pretty good density sensitively.”
Developers generally refer to “missing middle” housing as residential units that fall between a single-family home and mid-rise apartment buildings, often meaning smaller scale multifamily developments, like duplexes. Wonderview was modeled after courtyard-style apartments that became popular in the 1950s.
Different housing types sought
Venue Projects also developed the nearby 4 Square development, north of Highland Avenue on 14th Street. That development was meant to be a prototype look at how to build housing inspired by a modern trailer park and is a fourplex with fully furnished units. That development has been popular with shorter-term renters, such as traveling doctors or other professionals who move frequently, Perez said.
“We saw there is a lot of pent-up demand for alternative living choices,” Perez said.
Venue Projects also is considering offering fully furnished rentals at Wonderview, which can be appealing to renters who do not want to have to buy or move their own furniture.
Offices, food and beverage space planned
The Wonderview site is a thin strip of land that stretches from Highland Avenue to the north to Meadowbrook Avenue to the south, with 14th Place to the east.
On the northern piece of the property, closer to Highland, the developer is proposing three office buildings. One of the buildings would be used by Venue Projects for its new office, Perez said. One of the others is intended for local business advocacy group Local First Arizona to use as its office, and the third would be an office for Gateway Bank, a Mesa-based community bank that has worked with Venue Projects on its developments.
Along Highland, Venue Projects is planning a small-scale food and beverage space that could be used by a small restaurant or cafe.
Venue Projects has submitted its plan to the city for the Wonderview development and will begin neighborhood meetings in the next month, Perez said.
Venue Projects is one of the developers working on the restoration and redevelopment of Hayden Flour Mill in Tempe and has done other central Phoenix projects, including the Newton, which previously was the Beefeater restaurant at Camelback Road and Third Avenue, and the Orchard, at 12th Street north of Glendale Avenue.
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Reach the reporter at cvanek@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @CorinaVanek.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Apartments, offices pitched for central Phoenix redevelopment
