On the Site of the Cine Capri
I took the wife to lunch at Keegan’s yesterday, on the northwest corner of Camelback and 32nd Street. In my effort to escape the Biltmore area (no small feat given the construction on both Camelback and 24th Street), I passed by the year-old Optima Biltmore Lofts just south of Camelback on 24th Street.
Optima Biltmore is a two-building complex consisting of 230 units. Square footage on the units ranges from 840 to 2,666 and there are one-, two- and three-bedroom models.
Needless to say, these units are not inexpensive. Nothing is inexpensive in the Biltmore area, so named for the Arizona Biltmore Hotel resort just north of Camelback and east of 24th. The Ritz Carlton is across the street from Optima, in case you need any further financial frame of reference.
The loft market, like a the Phoenix real estate market in general, has been slow. And it may be even slower than the rest, given the particular buyer searching for a small (when compared to single-family) urban condo and the prices attached to said condo.
At this writing there are 73 units inside Optima for sale - nearly 1/3 of the building. Prices range from a 1,097-square foot unit for $465,900 to a nearly $2 million penthouse.
But today’s post isn’t just about real estate sales. It’s more about the changing face of real estate. You see, it’s virtually impossible to drive past Optima Biltmore and the adjacent commercial building to its immediate north and not think back to a warm day back in the summer of 1978.
My parents, my sister and I made the journey (it seemed longer to a 9-year-old) from Mesa to the Cine Capri theater, home of Phoenix’s largest screen, to see Star Wars. The George Lucas classic enjoyed a two-year run at the Cine Capri. Two years! When the first notes of John Williams’ theme blared from the theater’s speakers, I nearly jumped out of my seat.
The Cine Capri is long gone … there’s a “new” version near Loop 101 and 56th Street and Harkins Theaters also is building another Cine Capri in Tempe. But simple having a really, really big screen does not a Cine Capri create. Take things down to one screen and one movie (the last at the true Cine Capri was Titanic) and maybe then you’ll begin to recreate what was lost to the bulldozers.
We now return you to the Valley of the Sun, circa 2007, already in progress.
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Those were the days. Takes me back to “Grand Prix” with Paul Newman. It was at the Villa theatre in Salt Lake. Now an oriental rug store? A great action movie has to be on a giant screen.