Chandler officials and developers began the process toward building an office facility on Wednesday that’s expected to bring hundreds of jobs to the Price Road corridor.
Kieckhefer Properties and Willmeng Construction Inc. broke ground Wednesday on Chandler 202, a three-story, 140,000-square-foot office building located near the intersection of Frye Road and Ellis Street.
The Class A office facility can be used as either a single- or multi-tenant property and is expected to provide 700 to 1,000 jobs when completed. No companies are planning to move into the space as of yet. Completion is scheduled for March or April 2015.
Chandler Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Terri Kimble said the development is an important addition to the Chandler economy.
“It’s more jobs, it’s more job creation and this is more opportunity,” she said. “Right now, we don’t have a whole lot of vacant buildings to be able to bring companies into, and this adds one more tool for economic development to be able to help fill these buildings.”
The building was originally planned in the 1990s, but 9/11 and a struggling economy caused the project to be delayed, said Bill Woodruff, general manager of Kieckhefer Properties.
The project’s groundbreaking was initially scheduled for April, but the building’s design was tweaked to be taller, pushing the start to June.
“When we first came out here, this was 40 acres of farmland and we had a plan to put streets in, put buildings on … and this is the final piece to it,” Woodruff said.
The Price Road corridor is known for its plethora of tech companies including Intel, Orbital and Infusionsoft. Other prominent companies in the corridor, which stretches south of the Loop 202 Santan Freeway, include Nationstar, OnTrac, eBay, PayPal and Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is the city’s fourth-largest employer.
Jim Smith, an economic development specialist for Chandler, said the Chandler 202 building is a natural fit for the corridor.
“It has really been the city’s long-term goal to have that high-tech presence,” he said. “The city has really focused on the high-tech jobs and the jobs of the future, the industries of the future, so there has been significant investment made in the Price corridor to bring those types of jobs.”
