Scottsdale’s Aspirant Development purchased a nearly 2-acre site near Second Avenue and Van Buren Street in downtown Phoenix where it plans to build the tallest tower in Arizona.

The deal has taken years to come together, Mike Sutton, principal at Lee & Associates in Phoenix, who along with Brent Moser, represented the seller, Desert Troon, in the $9.2 million transaction that closed Dec. 15. The property was in escrow for nearly two years, beginning in February 2019, as the project, called Astra Phoenix, went through the planning and zoning process. The Phoenix City Council gave the project final approvals in early November.

“We knew the property would be a good fit for (Aspirant),” Sutton said. “With all the activity going on in downtown Phoenix and ASU, this is a nice, complementary project on the west end of the paseo.”

The $420 million project will total 1.8 million square feet in two towers, and will include over 390 units of luxury apartments, a 254-key, four-star luxury hotel, 190,000 square feet of Class A office space, 290 co-living units and 15,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

Solomon Cordwell Buenz architecture firm designed the tower. It’s unclear if a general contractor has been named yet.

The site is an existing parking lot and is adjacent to the Downtown YMCA.

The larger tower at Astra is planned to be the tallest building in Arizona, reaching 535 feet at its highest point. The Chase Tower, which is 483 feet tall, is the state’s current tallest building.

Aspirant Development, a division of Scottsdale-based Empire Group, is also the developer of the Stewart, the 19-story luxury apartment on Central Avenue and McKinley Street and is developing another 17-story apartment project in downtown near Third Avenue and Fillmore Street.

The firm is aiming to break ground on Astra in late summer or early fall of 2021.

“Arizona is benefitting, as it relates to commercial real estate, from the pandemic,” Moser, one of the brokers involved in the deal, said. “We have recently witnessed an influx of urban dwellers relocating to Maricopa County, especially from California. This phenomenon is helping to keep vacancy rates at a reasonable level and strongly benefitting residential-multifamily real estate. Phoenix is in a unique position as many top 20 markets across the U.S. have been in a free fall over the last nine months.”