New hotel to join first tech building at UA's south-side tech park

A four-story, 100-room hotel is planned for the UA Tech Park at the Bridges, where work is officially underway for the University of Arizona’s first tech-related building on the site.

Tech Parks Arizona has finalized a deal with Tucson-based HSL Properties to develop a Marriott-branded hotel on the city’s south side at the corner of Kino Parkway and Tucson Marketplace Boulevard, Carol Stewart, associate vice president for Tech Parks Arizona, said Thursday at a groundbreaking event.

The hotel, which will also have meeting space for public, private and academic users — is projected to break ground in July and open in July 2021.

“The new hotel is an important component of our full-service offerings we call live, work, play, learn and stay,” Stewart said.

Stewart and other officials said the new tech building, dubbed The Refinery — in planning in some form for more than a decade — will become a critical center of technology development.

UA President Robert C. Robbins said the new tech building will help boost the UA to the level of other university technology hubs, noting that economic development is part of the UA’s responsibility as a land-grant institution.

“If you’re a student, you can come to the University of Arizona and do great things,” Robbins said. “You don’t have to go to the Bay Area, you don’t have to go to Tech Square (in Atlanta) or the Research Triangle in North Carolina to have the idea to invent the next Amazon or Google. You can do it right here at the University of Arizona, right on this space. This is going to be the catalyst that helps put us on the map and make the world a better place.”

The Boyer Co. will build and own the 120,000-square foot building, and the UA will lease half that space under two leases recently approved by the Arizona Board of Regents. Construction is expected to be completed by summer 2021.

The UA will lease half of The Refinery from Boyer, with 45,000 square feet housing Tech Launch Arizona — the university’s technology commercialization arm — and the UA Center for Innovation business incubator and its client startups.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Betsy Cantwell, UA senior vice president for research and innovation, said the timing for The Refinery is right as Tucson’s “innovation ecosystem is just beginning to bubble up.”

“The bubbles are starting to reach the surface; we are in a position for the size of the community we are and the place we are in the country, to do remarkable things,” said Cantwell, who was lured away from her job as CEO of Arizona State University’s applied research and development arm, the Arizona State University Research Enterprise.

Cantwell recalled visiting Tucson before her appointment and seeing little more than “a very large pile of dirt” at The Bridges and wondering what was going on there.

“It became obvious that the thing we needed to do as the UA is to make a commitment sufficient to getting a building built here, and that was an easy commit,” she said, noting that the school will quickly fill half the space.

Under a 10-year lease with two five-year options, the base annual lease rate for the space housing Tech Launch and the UA Center for Innovation is $25.88 per square foot, with a tenant improvement allowance of $45 per square foot.

The space also will feature corporate innovation centers, a student innovation zone, and convertible meeting, event, classroom and maker spaces, the UA said.

Under a 20-year sublease also with options, 15,000 square feet will be subleased to the UA Applied Research Corp., a nonprofit corporation set up to partner on defense-related research.

The base rent to build out space including specialized labs for UA-ARC will be up to $63 per square foot annually, the UA said.