I happened to be driving down 1st St today and noticed some activity at Taylor Place, the ASU Downtown Residential Towers.  Alas, it was students and their parents, unloading the young students and their gear.  Today, was the first official move-in day for the new students.  Tomorrow will be another big day for the same.  Many of the new students will be attending the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, just across the street from the Residential Towers.

School starts next Monday.

Although the big move-in days are Wednesday & Thursday of this week, some students apparently are already moving in to the new 13-story Dorms (south Tower) in Downtown Phoenix.  Many of the 1500 new students for this year will be living Downtown, unlike the last 2 years where many students commuted.  School starts on August 25th. 

More to come this week I'm sure.

Read an extensive article by Jahna Berry at azcentral.com

Photo is courtesy of Cheryl Evans/The Arizona Republic

July 23. Everything You Wanted to Know About Computers – Don’t Be Afraid to Ask. Presented by Rozanne Hird. Bring your lunch to the Mercado, ASU at the Downtown Phoenix campus, noon-1pm. Free. To RSVP and for information, call  602 496 1000 or email ASUlectures@asu.edu.

The students who have seen and signed up to live in the Taylor Place, 13-story,  Dorm tower on the ASU Downtown Phoenix Campus are pretty "pumped up".  Designed by SmithGroup, the nation's oldest Architectural Design firm and Arizona winner of the 2007 AIA Firm of the Year award, the Dorms will be a very cool place to live, study or just hangout. 

In an interview with Jahna Berry from the Arizona Republic, Mark Kranz, Design Principal at SmithGroup said " we used bright pops of color to invigorate the project's gray and brown midrise.  Colored lights shine above each unit's door. Several student lounges, painted in vibrant colors, are visible from the street at night. There are many modern finishes, including bamboo plywood - it's called "plyboo" - in the lobby.  Outdoor spaces also played a role in the design, Kranz said. There are several open-air bridges that connect the first and second tower. Open-air study areas also take advantage of Arizona's weather. "Where else in the country can you have an outdoor study group in the middle of winter, 13 stories up overlooking your entire campus?" he said.

The dorm will also feature a shade garden, a 5,000-square-foot cafeteria, a coffee shop, convenience store, a fitness room and 24-hour security.

Students will start moving into the Tower on August 20th.

Jahna's article

Photo is courtesy of Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic

According to a story written by Yvonne Zusel of the Phoenix Business Journal, Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan led Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, city officials and university officials on a tour of the new building today.

Here's Yvonne's article:

Phoenix Business Journal

July 17, 2008

The smell of sawdust permeates the air and plastic still covers the chairs, but officials maintain the new Walter Cronkite School of Journalism building will be fully functional by Aug. 25, Arizona State University's first day of classes at the new facility.

Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan led Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, city officials and university officials on a tour of the new building Thursday.

"This is the premiere journalism complex," Callahan said.

Construction on the six-floor, 223,0000-square-foot building started 17 months ago and was financed with $71 million in bonds approved by Phoenix voters.

The structure will accommodate more than 1,400 Cronkite students and feature 280 digital work stations.

What Callahan described as a "newsroom of the future" has windows facing onto the city and is equipped with about 20 new Apple computers. There also will be a News Museum with assorted journalism memorabilia, two multipurpose television studios, and several lab classrooms for online, print and broadcast journalism students.

The design of the building takes into account sustainability, including windows that provide lots of natural light.

Callahan said the openness also gives the students a physical connection with the city they will be reporting on, and enables the city to look in on what Cronkite students are doing.

In addition to offering a state-of-the-art training facility for journalism students, Gordon said, the school will provide Phoenix with a new sales tax base in the form of added students, faculty and staff working, studying and living downtown.

"It's going to be a major economic engine," Gordon said.

Callahan said that while construction materials still pepper the area, everything will be ready by the time classes start.

"There's still lots to do, but if you saw the progress that's been made over the past 17 months, you'd know the rest is fairly minimal," he said. "We'll be ready to go."

If you were to walk around Downtown Phoenix these days, there are views from numerous city blocks that are so radically different than in the last few years.  Taylor Street certainly qualifies as one of those streets.  Today while walking to my car after an appointment at the Arizona Center, I was walking down Taylor Street heading west when I was taken aback by the view looking west.  I shot the photo you see with this post which shows the ASU College of Nursing & Health Care Innovation on the right, then the two new ASU Dormitory Towers further south on Taylor on the right.  In the distance on the right, you can see the Walter Cronkite school and in the distance on the left, you can see the circular frame for the Public Art Sculpture that will hover over the new ASU Downtown Civic Space. 

Just a few years ago, none of this existed.  In the next 45 days, the Dorm to the south will be nearly full with students, the fall school session will be starting and the new Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Broadcasting will be in full swing. 

See you on Campus!

Phoenix Business Journal - Monday, July 7,2008

By Yvonne Zusel

Arizona State University received a $7.5 million grant to lead 12 U.S. universities in an experimental digital media program.

The Carnegie Corp. of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are providing the funding for the News21 initiative, which places advanced journalism students in a digital "incubator" program.

As part of the program, students travel the country to do in-depth reporting on national issues and then experiment with various digital methods to present the news on several platforms.

News21 will be headquartered in the new downtown Phoenix home of ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

ASU will serve as one of the incubator sites, in addition to sites at the University of Maryland at College Park, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Syracuse University. Four incubators at other universities have been operating since the News21 program's start in 2006.

In addition, four other Carnegie-Knight schools, including the University of Missouri at Columbia and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will send students to the eight incubators.

ASU President Michael Crow said he is looking forward to the opportunities the three-year grant will afford the school.

"We are especially pleased to be involved in a project focused on the future of news, which is so vitally important to a free society," Crow said in a statement.

The Cronkite School will hire a national News21 director, a national Web developer and a program manager over the next few months.

We've shared a couple of different stories with you over the last week about the Construction progress on the ASU Downtown Campus which included some up to the minute reports about the floating sculpture which will hover over the Downtown Phoenix ASU Civic Space.  In a previous post, one of our Bloggers included a link to a webcam on the campus of ASU Downtown which is aimed at the floating sculpture which the artist, Janet Echelman has named "Sky Bloom".  When I went via the link provided, to visit the webcam, I got a message that said I might need something other than Internet Explorer in order to use the webcam.  If there are others of you out there, like me, who don't know how to use Firefox or something other than Internet Explorer, I am posting a photo of the current state of "Sky Bloom" as of Thursday, June 26th.  I am also posting a rendering courtesy of the Artist to show you what it will look like when complete.  The Civic Space is due to be completed in March of next year. 

Hope this helps!

Getting ready to send your son or daughter to the ASU Downtown Campus this fall?  Did you know that FHA has a special program for families that will allow you to buy a home or condo as a family with only a 3% down payment as long as your son or daughter occupies the property?  This would be a great way for you to not only obtain an Investment Property, but to simultaneously teach your son or daughter about real estate investing. 

There are currently many buying opportunities within a short distance of the ASU Downtown Campus both condos and homes, under $200,000.

For more details, contact Lyle Plocher with Urban Connection Realty at 602 373 3725 or lyle@urbanconnectionrealty.com