Gaylord needs property to be blighted to build in Arizona

Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando

The Mesa City Council approved Monday the designation of redevelopment area for the 3,200-acre Mesa Proving Grounds.

That means the developers of two major resorts and a convention center will get an additional $7 million in property tax breaks, for a total of $85.5 million. The property is owned by DMB Associates of Scottsdale.

The resolution, which accepts existence of ‘slum and blight’ conditions on the property, needed six out of seven votes, per state statute, to pass. It was on the consent agenda, which is often approved without discussion, and the vote was unanimous.

In September, Mesa announced the $136.5 million tax-incentive agreement, which includes a bed tax incentive that’s up for a public vote in March. Nashville’s Gaylord Entertainment Co. plans to build a minimum 1,200-room hotel and convention center, similar to the company’s high-profile properties in Texas, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Read the entire story in the East Valley Tribune newspaper.

Gaylord Hotels go to Arizona

Gaylord Texan Hotel

The announcement Sept. 3 that Gaylord Hotels would build its next major venue near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. The buzz went national, in fact, as hotel-industry publications and Web sites pulsed with news of Gaylord's planned expansion.

In the month-plus since Gaylord first announced its Mesa venture, the company and DMB Associates, from whom Gaylord is buying the resort site, have been ironing out a development agreement with the city.

An early draft showed Mesa allowing Gaylord to retain bed taxes to be collected at its resort, as long as the money is used to promote its Valley venue and Arizona tourism.

Under an economic-development provision in state law, Mesa also will take ownership of the land and lease it back to Gaylord, giving the company a break on property taxes.

No drawings nor site plans for the Mesa site have been drafted. Mesa is annexing and rezoning the site.

Read the entire story HERE.

A Handmade Home

by Joyce Wadler


ANY fool can hire an architect to draw up a plan for a house, but it takes a truly inspired fool — which is to say, an artist — to start building and see where the earth and driftwood and shards of broken pottery take him, and an equally impassioned fool — say, a woman in love — to go along and carry the rocks on her back.



This is how it was with the little-known sculptural home that is Eliphante, three acres of fantastical domes, shacks and follies created over 28 years by Michael Kahn and his wife, Leda Livant. Here there is the residence, which has 25-foot ceilings and incorporates rocks and scraps from construction sites; there, a studio, one wall of which is the Ford pickup that brought the couple west; and a labyrinthine art gallery called Pipedreams, in which every painting has its own environment.


All photos by David Kadlubowski

The building that gave the compound its name has a long, trunklike entrance made of rock and an irregularly mounded roof. “Aaah, Ella-fahn-tay,” a friend joked soon after it was built, giving it a playful faux-French pronunciation.

The couple began building when they first arrived here, although they did not own the property, and they continued to do so until the progressive brain disease, which killed Mr. Kahn this December at age 71, robbed him of the ability to speak.

Read the entire story in the New York Times.

House of the Week

The house of the week is in Sedona, Arizona. A chapel is included with the home. It is a little pricey but check out the view.
~~~~~~~


Where: Sedona, Ariz., about 115 miles north of Phoenix



Amenities: Three-bedroom guest house, guest apartment, detached house ("casita"), pool, two garages, workout room, wine cellar, putting green, picnic area with barbecue pit
Asking Price: $11.75 million



Listing Agent: Edwin Savage and Julie Treiber, Equitable, an affiliate of Christie's Great Estates, 480-580-5940; and Bruce Tobias of Century 21, 928-282-1490



Due Diligence: Retired software executive Jerry Foley and his wife, Roxanne, bought the first 2.5 acres of this property for $204,000 in 1996 and spent a year building a home. The house has flagstone floors, hand-carved wooden doors and floor-to-ceiling windows with views of Red Rock State Park. An artist from Hawaii oversaw the design of the grounds, which include sculpture collected from around the world and included in the sale. There's a nondenominational chapel with stained-glass windows. Mr. Foley says it's inspired by ones he and his wife saw on a trip to Bali; they've held weddings and baptisms there for friends and family.



This article was in the Wall Street Journal. Write to Ben Casselman at ben.casselman@wsj.com