The Arizona State University student housing complex will replace a hotel

Under plans approved in October by the Tempe City Council, developers will demolish a Tempe hotel near the Arizona State University campus to build an eight-story student housing development.

The project, called Vale Student Housing, will include 277 apartments with a total of 865 bedrooms. The units are to be rented with bedrooms, so each resident will sign an individual lease for their bedroom and share common areas, said Nick Wood, an attorney for Snell and Wilmer who represented the developer in the zoning case.

The project’s developer, Gilbane, is also the developer of the nearby Apollo apartment complex at Apache Boulevard and Terrace Road.

The site is located on the southeast corner of Rural Road and Apache Boulevard and is currently home to a CVS Pharmacy store, a parking lot and a Moxy hotel. The CVS and its parking lot will remain unchanged as a result of the redevelopment, but the Moxy Hotel will be bulldozed.

“The hotel building is really old,” Wood said. “It’s time to transform this site from an older site into something new.”

The hotel changed its name to Moxy in 2015, but the building was built in the 1970s and has operated as a hotel under other brands.

The apartment building will feature courtyards with recreation areas for residents on the ground floor, and a recreation terrace with a swimming pool, pickleball courts and a fitness center on the eighth floor. The project will be eight stories tall at its highest point, but will be “lowered” and shorter on the south side, closest to the residential area.

“ASU is one of the best schools in the world, and demand is driving their recruitment,” Wood said. “It is important to have great residences for students who come from all over the world to ASU.”

Wood said a closing date for the hotel has not yet been announced, but construction on the project is expected to begin in 2025.

The site is adjacent to another student housing development called the District on Apache. It’s across Wiejska Droga from the place where the controversial project of a 21-story apartment building was built proposed, but the proposal was later withdrawn due to lack of support from the city authorities.

The Vale project has gained support from neighborhood organizations in the area.

Citizens for a Vibrant Apache Corridor wrote a letter to city officials in support of the project, saying the scale is appropriate and the developer is willing to work with the neighborhood.

“They have worked very well with us and we now believe the project is worthy of the very busy Apache and Rural intersection,” Matthew Salenger, co-chair of the group, wrote in a letter to council.

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