A century-old office tower in downtown Phoenix has changed hands for $10.3 million, and its new owner wants to turn it into a Marriott hotel. The Ellis Building, a six-story structure at Second Avenue and Monroe Street, was sold by Equus Development Corp. to Aperture Hotels in a deal that closed on October 6. Aperture now plans to convert the long-vacant building into a Tribute Portfolio hotel, the Marriott brand known for independent, boutique-style properties housed in distinctive buildings.
The sale and conversion plan were reported by Axios, with additional details confirmed by azcentral.com, which reported the $10.3 million purchase price and described the Ellis as a six-story office building at the intersection of Second Avenue and Monroe Street. The building has sat vacant for several years, and this is not the first time someone has tried to give it new life. Equus Development Corp. previously attempted to convert the Ellis for residential use, an effort that did not pan out, azcentral.com reported.
A Historic Shell Gets a New Hospitality Partner
The Ellis dates back to 1922, according to Lodging Magazine. For the hotel conversion, Aperture Hotels is working with Acumen Development Partners on what Lodging Magazine described as an adaptive reuse project, and the outlet reported an anticipated opening in 2028. Aperture's own portfolio page lists the property as The Ellis Phoenix, a Tribute Portfolio hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.
Exactly how many rooms the finished hotel will have remains a little murky. Lodging Magazine reported the project as a 100-room boutique hotel, while azcentral.com put the range between 95 and 105 rooms.
Restaurant and Bar Planned for Ground Floor
Whatever the final room count, the plans call for the hotel to include street-level food and drink. Lodging Magazine reported the project will feature a ground-floor restaurant and what it described as a speakeasy-inspired bar, fitting the kind of character-driven amenities Marriott markets under its Tribute Portfolio brand.
The Ellis isn't the only historic downtown Phoenix building getting the hotel treatment this year. In August, the city approved a development agreement to preserve and reuse the Security Building and Annex Building at Central Avenue and Van Buren Street as a full-service hotel, according to azcentral.com. That $135 million project is planned to include 255 guest rooms, a 5,500-square-foot ballroom, and 13,000 square feet of meeting space, the outlet reported.
Part of a Broader Office-Conversion Wave
The Ellis deal lands amid a wider shift in how Phoenix is handling its aging and underused office stock. Since 2024, 3.3 million square feet of office space in metro Phoenix has been converted or demolished, with another 4.1 million square feet of projects proposed, according to Bisnow. Office-to-residential projects make up 28% of the city's proposed conversion pipeline, compared with 38% to 39% for office-to-industrial conversions, Bisnow reported, and the outlet noted Phoenix is expected to produce 1,550 residential units from office-to-apartment conversions this year alone.
Phoenix ranked ninth among 53 U.S. markets last year for the amount of office space planned for conversion or demolition, per Bisnow's reporting. Other local examples of buildings finding second lives include the 11-story former bank building at One Camelback, which Bisnow reported is becoming a 163-unit luxury apartment complex with rents reaching up to $10,000 a month. Downtown's historic Luhrs Building followed a similar hotel path years earlier, when Lincoln Property Company had sold it by February 28, 2020, for $14 million to PEG Companies and A.G. Hill Partners, who planned to renovate 92,000 of its 108,000 square feet into an upscale hotel while the Hagens Berman Law Firm retained the top floor, according to Greater Phoenix In Business Magazine.
