The fifth Class A office building will rise at SkySong, The ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center in the coming months. With the other four SkySong office buildings at high occupancy, the SkySong development team will begin work on SkySong 5, with a groundbreaking ceremony to take place on July 9. The building will be six stories — the tallest on property yet — and will include a number of features that are new to the project.

With the newest building, the total SkySong project will reach about 868,457 square feet of commercial building.

The design of SkySong 5 includes extensive outdoor work and meeting spaces as well as public art features, and continues the trend at the property of each new building having unique and distinctive features, including a large second-story outdoor patio and event space. The cost of the building and the accompanying parking structure that will be built will exceed $43 million.

Located on the northwest corner of the iconic SkySong shade structure, SkySong 5 will be taller than the other commercial office buildings on the campus and slightly larger, at 151,318 square feet. Like the other buildings, it will be constructed to meet LEED certification standards for green building practices. 

In 2008, SkySong 1 and 2 opened and reached capacity in only a few years despite the economic downturn. SkySong 3 opened in early 2015, and SkySong 4 opened in the fall of 2016.  

More than 2,000 employees at more than 60 companies now work in the SkySong buildings for a mix of innovative companies.

“SkySong 5 will house a new wave of exciting and innovative companies that are increasingly being drawn to Scottsdale’s skilled workforce and quality of life,” said Sharon Harper, President & CEO of Plaza Companies, the master developer of the project. “The SkySong campus has added another point of attraction: an outstanding and supportive business environment that gets better with every new company that moves in and every new employee that walks the campus.”

“We are very pleased to see the continued growth and progress of SkySong,” said Don Couvillion, vice president of real estate at University Realty. “The construction of this new office building — the third in five years at SkySong — is a key step forward in continuing to make the vision of the project a reality.”

The rise of another SkySong building cements Scottsdale’s place as a destination for innovative companies and also as one of the best cities to launch a startup, outside of Silicon Valley and New York. The city boasts over 13,000 companies founded since 2010 that had at least $5 million in annual revenue.

“SkySong is an integral part of Scottsdale’s emergence as an economic and technology hub in the southwest,” said Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane. “We are excited to see this project continue to grow and thrive, and to maximize its economic impact on our community while helping to revitalize the McDowell Road Corridor.”

Butler Design Group is the architect for SkySong 5, and DPR is the general contractor for the building.

For more information on the groundbreaking or on SkySong, The ASU Scottsdale Innovation in general, contact Tom Evans at 602.448.5483 or tom@evanscommunications.com.

SkySong is a 42-acre mixed use development designed to:

• Create an ecology of collaboration and innovation among high-profile technology enterprises and related researchers;

• Advance global business objectives of on-site enterprises;

• Raise Arizona’s profile as a global center of innovation through co-location of ASU’s strategic global partners; and

• Create a unique regional economic and social asset.

Companies located at SkySong enjoy a special relationship with Arizona State University, which has more than 90,000 students studying across four metropolitan Phoenix campuses, in Lake Havasu and online. ASU is one of the largest public universities in the nation, with the majority of its students attending its campus in Tempe, Arizona, less than three miles from SkySong. 

In addition to locating its own innovative research units at the center, through ASU’s on-site operations, tenant companies have a single point of contact for introductions to researchers, faculty and programs to address their specific needs.

For more information on SkySong, visit www.skysong.com or www.facebook.com/skysongcenter.