A tower that could soon be Arizona’s tallest building received final approval Wednesday from Phoenix City Council.

Article originally posted here.

Council approved an amendment that will allow Aspirant Development, a division of Scottsdale-based Empire Group, to build a mixed-use project, called Astra Phoenix, that will include a tower reaching 535 feet at its highest point — surpassing the state’s tallest building, the 483-foot Chase Tower on Central Avenue. A second planned tower would reach 380 feet. Apartments and a hotel are proposed for the towers.

Astra Phoenix is planned on 2.8 acres in downtown near Second Avenue and Van Buren Street. The site is currently a surface parking lot and is adjacent to the Downtown YMCA.

On Wednesday, Council also approved realigning the Taylor Street pedestrian paseo through the project between the two towers.

Solomon Cordwell Buenz is the architect of the mixed-use project.

In a panel discussion hosted by the Phoenix Business Journal in September, Nick Wood, a partner at Snell & Wilmer, the zoning attorney for the project, said activity in downtown Phoenix has put the city on the map for capital markets looking for places to invest.

“Phoenix has become a mainstream name when it comes to high-rise development,” he said at the time. “With all of the investment that has been made by the city and state in downtown, it has drawn high demand.”

Phoenix has seen an influx of high-rise construction in recent months, with several apartment and hotel projects under construction. There were 16 tower cranes over Phoenix’s Central Business District in the third quarter of 2020, an increase from nine in the first quarter, according to the latest Rider Levett Bucknall crane count, which tallies tower cranes in major cities in the United States and Canada.