Ambassador event: PHXCore walking tour

Published: 05/10/2019
Updated: 02/13/2020

Located in the heart of the fifth largest city in the nation, Phoenix’s Innovation District, PHX Core, is a community of pioneers, collaborators and disruptors. With over 130 startup and creative companies, 6 million-square-feet of research and academic facilities, and more than 13,000 higher education students, PHX Core is helping the region become a hub for innovation.

The City of Phoenix’s Community and Economic Development Department led a walking tour of the northern portion of PHX Core for our Ambassadors, stopping at 11 innovative hubs in Downtown Phoenix. This two-mile-long walking tour gave us a chance to learn about all of exciting and new ideas occurring within just one small part of the region as well as learning how the historic buildings are being kept alive.

Our first stop was the A.E. England Building on Arizona State University’s Downtown campus. Built in 1926, the historical building now provides space for meetings, classes, offices, art events and banquets.

 

 

 

 

Next we walked to ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law which just finished construction in 2017. This six-story college was designed to be inviting, engaging and accessible to everyone who is interested in learning about the law.

 

 

 

 

 The Thunderbird School of Global Management was originally founded in 1946 as a private institution. It was acquired by ASU in 2014 and relocated to Downtown Phoenix in 2018.

 

 

 

The newly renovated Arizona Center is a hub of entertainment, shopping, live music and more. It even has a few ASU classrooms on site as well as various office spaces.

 

 

 

 

The Phoenix Biomedical Campus is a 30-acre urban medical and bioscience campus in Downtown Phoenix. This campus has multiple tenants including Ashion Analytics, The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), International Genomics Consortium, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, Bioscience High School, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

 

 

Halfway through our tour, we walked the grounds of St. Mary’s Basilica which celebrated their 100-year anniversary in 2015. 

 

 

 

 

The Phoenix Convention Center, which opened in 1972, provides a variety of events, conferences, comedy shows and other entertainment every month. The center is within walking distance from major hotels, shopping, entertainment, sports, theater venues and has its own stop on the Valley Metro light rail line.

 

 

 

Marketplace One is a private investment firm that houses multiple businesses in their Downtown Phoenix building from Cartel Coffee Lab to co-working space The Department. In the past, Frank Lloyd Wright had even designed a rooftop garden for their building that they hope to create in the future.

 

 

 

There are some major renovations occurring in CityScape where a mixed-use project, called Block 23 will soon reside. Block 23 will contain the area’s first grocery store, over 300 apartments by StreetLights Residential, creative office space, restaurant and retail, as well as plenty of parking.

 

 

 

 

The U.S. Bank building on 1st Avenue, one of the tallest buildings in the state, houses multiple other businesses and organizations including the Arizona office for DoubleDutch, an event management software and solutions company. DoubleDutch, a San Francisco-based company, looked at 15 cities before choosing Greater Phoenix because of the talented workforce and quality of life in the region.

 

 

 

Our final destination was The Monroe, a mid-century modern multi-tenant spacebuilt in 1964 and renovated in 2017 with a range of new amenities from a coffee shop to a center just for conferences and training.

 

 

 

Are you interested in seeing Greater Phoenix continue to become a hub for innovation? Become an Ambassador – learn more.