Empire Group just announced Revelry, a new high-rise community going up on the southeast corner of Rural Road and University Drive in Tempe, a block or two from ASU. Ground breaks this spring. Two towers, 17 and 15 stories, 533 units total, about 850,000 square feet.
The amenity list reads like a hotel brochure: pickleball courts, a golf simulator, a bowling alley, a dog spa, sauna, cold plunge, a 27,000-square-foot pool deck. Reported project cost is in the $280 million range, though that figure varies some depending on the source.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Optima has been building this type of high-rise up the road in Scottsdale for years, Optima Kierland and Optima Sonoran Village among them, with the same hotel-grade amenity list. Optima has used both models across its Scottsdale projects over time: some towers sold off as condos, others kept and leased as rentals. It's a real choice developers make per building, not a fixed formula. Revelry, as announced, is going the rental route.
That choice isn't an accident. A developer who sells a building as condos gets one lump sum, split across however many buyers close on units, and then they're done, whatever that building does for the next 30 years belongs to someone else. A developer who keeps the building and rents it out collects income every year instead, and still owns the dirt and the structure underneath it. Several groups researching this shift have pointed out that the rental route can take 15 to 20 years to match what a condo sale would've paid up front, but after that, every dollar of rent and every dollar of appreciation is pure upside, and the developer still owns an asset instead of a memory. That's a big part of why more builders are choosing to hold their luxury towers rather than sell them unit by unit, especially in corridors like this one where demand looks durable.
Empire Group, Gensler (architect), Layton Construction (general contractor), and Diversified Partners (retail leasing) are the names behind Revelry, real firms with real track records, not a speculative announcement that quietly disappears in a year.
Worth watching whether Tempe actually has the luxury demand to support a project this size. Other developers have tried this play elsewhere and it hasn't always panned out, a big amenity list doesn't guarantee the rents needed to justify an $280 million build. Revelry is a real bet, not a sure thing.
How do you think this affects Tempe moving forward? Do you think Tempe has enough luxury demand to make this work? Let us know in the comments.
