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Chandler high-rise project still stalled
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The developer behind a stalled high-rise next to Chandler Fashion Center failed to meet city officials’ ultimatum Monday, leaving the unfinished project’s future uncertain.
“He was a no-show,” said Chandler Planning and Development director Doug Ballard.
Jeff Cline, manager of the planned 10-story Elevation Chandler project that would be the city’s tallest building, asked city officials Friday to extend his deadline to pay for building permits required to finish construction. But he failed to make a Monday deadline to pay a portion of the permits fees.
Chandler planning officials gave Cline until close of business Monday to pay half the immediately required fees — about $61,000 — to get a onetime 30-day extension set to expire Aug. 23. In all, the necessary permits that had not yet been obtained totalled about $700,000.
That price will now increase as the developer will have to pay new city review fees as well as impact fees that have increased substantially since plans for Elevation Chandler were originally approved, Ballard said.
Cline was not available for comment Monday.
He also had not contacted anyone in Chandler’s Planning and Development Department by 5 p.m. Monday, Ballard said.
In mid-April, work stopped on the project that has since sat skeletonlike with only the framework for the first eight stories completed.
Cline has repeatedly called the construction halt simply a result of a delay in getting the building’s upperlevel condominium portion approved by the city.
“This delay has triggered multiple other requirements that have required yet additional time and substantially more market driven cost to the project,” Cline stated in his extension request faxed to the city Friday. But in a response letter faxed Monday to Cline, Ballard said current work on the building’s shell is “unrelated to any city code requirement or regulation.”
“You have been free to continue construction under the shell permit . . . and have been free to pull the other permits associated with this project,” Ballard wrote.
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