LOCAL LIVING

Where Central Phoenix Is Headed: Five Projects Shaping the Next Five Years

Last updated September 2026 by Nick Calamia, REALTOR® and Licensed General Contractor (ROC 350115)

Central Phoenix is the band of older, close-in neighborhoods running roughly from Thomas Road north to the Piestewa Peak foothills, and from about 19th Avenue east to 24th Street, across zip codes 85012, 85013, 85014 and 85020. It is not a subdivision and it is not a village. It is a collection of historic districts, mid-century ranches, and a commercial spine along Central Avenue that has been trying to become a real urban corridor for about forty years. Right now it is closer than it has ever been.

I work in this area as both a REALTOR® and a licensed general contractor, which means I see it twice: once as inventory and once as a job site. Here is what is genuinely happening, what I could verify, and what it means for what your house is worth.

What is actually being built in Central Phoenix right now?

The two biggest physical changes are both clustered at Central Avenue and Osborn Road, about a mile apart from each other, and both are adaptive reuse of 1950s and 1960s buildings rather than new ground-up towers.

1. Park Central: the jobs anchor

Park Central Mall opened in 1957 and quickly became the center of activity along Central Avenue, thanks to its proximity to some of Phoenix's best neighborhoods and easy access from Central Avenue, Thomas Road and Indian School Road. It died as a mall and came back as something more durable. The redevelopment added a $100 million, 180,000-square-foot Creighton University health sciences campus, bringing a four-year medical school to the property along with several other medical disciplines , plus a 2,000-space parking structure built in partnership with the City of Phoenix through a Community Facilities District and the redevelopment of the 193,000-square-foot Burgbacher building into modern office space . The pipeline is still filling: a 25,330-square-foot outpatient cardiology center was announced in May 2026 for the Burgbacher building, and Valley of the Sun United Way is relocating its headquarters into the 14,000-square-foot Graham building .

Why a homeowner should care: medical and education jobs do not leave. A hospital-adjacent campus with a medical school attached creates a permanent, high-income, walk-or-short-drive buyer pool for every house within about two miles. That is the single most reliable price support in 85012 and 85013.

2. The Duo: the towers at 3003 North Central

In March 2024 a $163 million redevelopment was announced for the Central Park Plaza block, including demolition of the old mall portion in favor of parking and additional apartment space and the combining of the two towers into a single building, renamed The Duo, with construction beginning later that year and completion expected in 2027. Those two towers each stand 213 feet tall with brick and glass facades.

From a construction standpoint this is the harder kind of project. Tying two separate 1960s structures together, re-skinning them, and converting office floorplates to residential means new vertical plumbing stacks, new mechanical, and a facade that has to survive 115-degree summers and Phoenix UV exposure at 299 sunny days a year. When it lands in 2027, it changes the skyline view from every north-facing mid-century ranch in Uptown.

Did Central Phoenix lose its light rail expansion?

Not its existing line, but the next one is gone. On January 27, 2026, the Phoenix City Council voted to re-evaluate high-capacity transit options for west Phoenix and prioritize a proposed West Phoenix corridor along Indian School Road. The 7-2 decision ended the Capitol light rail extension that would have connected downtown Phoenix to the state Capitol, after fierce political opposition from Republican state lawmakers who called the project too expensive. Following the vote, Valley Metro is exiting project development and the federal Capital Investment Grant process for the Capitol Extension.

The replacement is a long way out. Per city staff's timeline, construction on the Indian School extension would begin around 2032, with completion expected in 2037.

Read that as a Central Phoenix homeowner and it is quietly good news for values. The Central Avenue and 19th Avenue spine that already runs through 85012 and 85013 keeps operating, and no competing transit-oriented corridor opens anywhere near this area for at least a decade. Scarcity of walkable, rail-served land inside the 51, the 10 and the 17 is the whole argument for Central Phoenix pricing. That scarcity just got extended.

Can I build a casita on my Central Phoenix lot?

In most cases now, yes, and this is the third force reshaping the area. Arizona House Bill 2720, signed into law on May 21, 2024, requires Arizona cities with at least 75,000 residents to adopt regulations legalizing construction of accessory dwelling units on residential parcels. An accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, is simply a second small home on the same lot as your main house: a casita, a guest house, a converted and permitted garage with its own kitchen and bath. The law requires those cities to allow at least one attached and one detached ADU as a permitted use, with an additional detached ADU allowed if one of them is a restricted-affordable unit. It also restricts how cities can regulate them, prohibiting limits on separately leasing the main dwelling and the ADU, prohibiting requirements that the exterior design match, and limiting setback requirements. HB 2928, signed May 23, 2025, extended nearly identical requirements to counties with a January 1, 2026 compliance deadline.

Central Phoenix is where this law bites hardest, because the lots are big. A 1940s Windsor Square or Medlock Place parcel or a North Central lot off the Murphy Bridle Path frequently runs 8,000 to 15,000 square feet with an alley and a detached garage already sitting there. That is a casita site.

Two hard limits, and I want to be blunt about them because I have had this conversation with clients who already bought plans. First, HOA covenants remain enforceable, and state law does not override private HOA agreements. Second, if your home sits inside a City of Phoenix historic preservation overlay, and a great many Central Phoenix homes do, you are still subject to historic design review. Verify your exact parcel with the City of Phoenix Planning and Development Department before you spend a dollar on design. On the economics, one 2026 industry survey put typical long-term rents for Phoenix-area ADUs in a wide band, with central Phoenix among the areas commanding the higher end of the range . Treat any specific rent number you see online as a starting point, not a pro forma.

My contractor caution: trenching in Central Phoenix means caliche, the cement-hard natural calcium carbonate layer under a lot of Valley soil that can turn a simple sewer run into a jackhammer day. On older lots you are also tying into clay or cast iron mains that were installed before Eisenhower. Budget for the underground, not the kitchen. If you are weighing whether a specific property can actually support a casita, that is exactly what a Builder's Eye report is for: it reads lot coverage, zoning and permit history alongside real contractor repair pricing.

4 and 5: The rental build-out and the office conversion wave

Central Phoenix is absorbing more apartments than any other established close-in area, and the format is shifting from 300-unit podium projects to smaller infill. A 36-unit complex called CenTria Biltmore went under construction at 4235 North 24th Street just south of Glenrosa Avenue near midtown Phoenix, with the developer positioning it as attainable middle housing. Scan the corridor and you see the pattern in the names alone: The Station on Central at 4140 North Central in 85012, Alloy Midtown, Ellis Midtown on 7th Avenue, Mozaic at Steele Park on Indian School, 60 at Melrose in the Melrose District on the 7th Avenue side.

Running alongside that is Arizona's 2024 adaptive reuse legislation (HB 2297, titled "adaptive reuse; commercial buildings; zoning"), which pushes cities to make it easier to convert commercial buildings into housing. Central Avenue between Thomas and Camelback holds a long inventory of dated office towers with the exact profile that conversion targets. I will not forecast a specific number of units, because nobody credibly can yet. But the direction is set, and The Duo is the proof of concept.

What this means for a single-family owner in 85014 or 85020 is simple and worth stating plainly: renters absorb the density, and detached houses on real lots become rarer relative to total housing. That is the mechanism behind the price divergence below.

How much do homes cost in Central Phoenix, and what am I buying?

Central Phoenix is holding value better than the city around it. Zillow puts the average home value in 85012 at $652,432 as of 2026, up 1.3 percent over the past year. RealtyTrac shows a median sales price of $577,363 in 85012 with 178 homes listed and 147 sold over the trailing twelve months. An August 2026 market report from the Arizona Homes and Condos team puts 85020 and 85022, the North Mountain and North Central area, at a median of $560,000 to $620,000, characterized by postwar ranches and pocket-luxury infill near Piestewa Peak. Compare that to the city as a whole: Zillow has Phoenix at $410,222, down 2.1 percent over the past year , and Redfin reported an average Phoenix house price of $440,000 in its August 2026 read, down 1.1 percent year over year. Central Phoenix is flat to slightly up while the metro drifts down. That is the whole thesis in two numbers. For live inventory, start with Uptown Phoenix 85012, North Central Phoenix 85020 and Camelback East 85014, and check conditions against my Market Intelligence Report.

Schools hold up the family end of the demand. Per ADE FY25 official data, four of Madison Elementary District's eight schools earned an A letter grade: Madison Traditional Academy at 87.27 points, Madison Rose Lane at 86.81, Madison Heights Elementary at 86.51 and Madison Richard Simis at 84.12. Phoenix Union High School District, the largest high school district in Arizona by enrollment, earned a B LEA grade in FY25 across 20 rated schools. Boundaries here are genuinely street by street. Verify before you write an offer.

Central Phoenix housing stock by era: a contractor's read

Era and style	Where you find it	What I check first as a GC
1920s to 1940s bungalow, Tudor, Spanish Colonial Revival	Willo, Encanto-Palmcroft, Alvarado, Medlock Place (85003, 85007, 85013 edges)	Original knob-and-tube or early cloth wiring, cast iron drain lines, undersized electrical service, historic overlay design review on anything exterior
1950s to 1960s ranch and mid-century modern	North Central 85012 and 85014, Windsor Square, the 7th Street and 12th Street pockets	Slab-on-grade with galvanized supply lines, single-pane aluminum windows, undersized or add-on ductwork, original block walls with no insulation
1960s to 1970s foothills ranch	85020 below Piestewa Peak, off Northern and Dunlap	Hillside lots with retaining walls and drainage paths that monsoon storms test every July and August, plus aging flat or low-slope roofing
1980s to 2000s infill and condo	Central Avenue corridor, scattered 85013 and 85014 teardown replacements	HOA reserves and special assessments on condos, first-generation stucco detailing, original 1990s HVAC well past useful life
2015 to present custom infill	Scraped lots throughout 85012 and 85014, often 3,500 to 5,000 square feet on an old ranch parcel	Speed-build finish quality, scale relative to neighbors, whether the price reflects real craftsmanship or just new drywall

Two Arizona-specific items I flag on nearly every Central Phoenix inspection. First, water hardness. Phoenix water runs roughly 15 to 25 grains per gallon, some of the hardest in the country, and on a 1958 house with original galvanized lines that scale is a real factor in flow and in water heater life. Second, glazing. Original single-pane aluminum windows are the single biggest comfort complaint in mid-century Central Phoenix, and they are also a visible resale item. I wrote about what windows do to a Phoenix house and its value if you want the long version. If you are buying into a historic district specifically, my historic homes page covers the overlay side.

The Bottom Line

Central Phoenix over the next five years gets more jobs, more apartments, more casitas, and no new rail. That combination favors detached houses on real lots inside 85012, 85013, 85014 and 85020, because everything being added is either commercial or rental while the single-family supply stays fixed. The 2026 price data already shows it: the area is flat to up while the metro is down one to two percent.

The honest risk is the buildings themselves. This is a 1925-to-1965 housing stock in a climate that punishes roofs, glazing, mechanicals and plumbing harder than almost anywhere in the country, and a beautiful listing photo hides all of it. Buy the location, but price the condition with real contractor numbers before you commit. I am happy to walk a property with you and tell you exactly what it will cost, whether you end up buying it or not.

Frequently Asked Questions

What zip codes are considered Central Phoenix?

Central Phoenix generally covers 85012, 85013, 85014 and 85020, running roughly from Thomas Road north to the Piestewa Peak foothills and from about 19th Avenue east to 24th Street. Locals split it further into Midtown around Central and Thomas, Uptown around Central and Camelback, and North Central above Bethany Home Road along the Murphy Bridle Path. Encanto Village and part of Camelback East and North Mountain villages fall inside it.

Is Central Phoenix a good place to buy a house in 2026?

It depends on your tolerance for older construction. Zillow shows the average home value in 85012 at $652,432 as of 2026, up 1.3 percent year over year, while Phoenix as a whole sits at $410,222 and is down 2.1 percent. That gap is the value of location and an irreplaceable housing stock. The risk is real: most homes here were built before 1970 and carry deferred mechanical, electrical and plumbing work.

Did Phoenix cancel the light rail extension?

Phoenix City Council voted 7-2 on January 27, 2026 to end the Capitol Extension and prioritize a West Phoenix corridor along Indian School Road instead. Valley Metro is exiting the federal Capital Investment Grant process for that project. City staff project construction on the Indian School route starting around 2032 with completion in 2037. The existing Central Avenue and 19th Avenue spine through Central Phoenix is unaffected and keeps running.

Can I build a casita or ADU on my Central Phoenix lot?

In most cases yes. Arizona HB 2720, signed May 21, 2024, requires cities over 75,000 residents, which includes Phoenix, to allow at least one attached and one detached accessory dwelling unit on any lot where a single-family home is permitted, and it protects long-term rental of that unit. Two catches apply: private HOA covenants remain enforceable, and homes inside a Phoenix historic preservation overlay face separate design review. Verify your specific parcel before you design anything.

What is the Murphy Bridle Path in Phoenix?

The Murphy Bridle Path is a wide dirt and decomposed granite trail running along North Central Avenue through North Central Phoenix, originally built for horses and now used mostly for walking, running and riding. It is the defining feature of the North Central corridor and a major reason homes fronting or backing that stretch of Central Avenue hold a premium over comparable square footage elsewhere in 85012 and 85020.

Nick Calamia is a licensed REALTOR® brokered by RETSY | Forbes Global Properties and a licensed General Contractor (Everhome LLC, ROC 350115). Project statuses, statutes, school ratings and market figures cited here reflect sources available as of September 2026 and are subject to change; verify current zoning, historic overlay and permitting requirements for your specific parcel with the City of Phoenix. Content is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as construction, legal, or investment advice.