Cookin' in Phoenix: Hip restaurants raising home values

• Developer says central Phoenix%27s many new restaurants are drawing more home buyers%2C particularly younger ones.
• Many projects are taking over old buildings because vacant land is more difficult to find.
• Crudo%27s owners planning a restaurant that mixes southern cooking with Italian food.

Retail has long followed new rooftops out to the edges of the Valley. But now, new and trendy restaurants are flocking to central Phoenix to be in and near older rooftops.

More than a dozen restaurants, mostly backed by local, popular chefs, have opened on vacant lots or in older rehabbed buildings across downtown and uptown Phoenix during the past few years. Plans call for several more hip eateries to open up in the central areas this year.

Home values in many of these neighborhoods surrounding these new restaurant hubs are climbing faster than almost all other parts of the Valley:

• ZIP code 85014 is home to The Yard and its three restaurants, the Colony eatery project under construction and the recently announced Crown on 7th development. Home prices jumped 21 percent last year.

• ZIP code 85012 includes eateries Postino, Federal Pizza, Windsor and Joyride, all on Central Avenue. Median home price climbed almost 17 percent, according to The Arizona Republic's latest Valley Home Values analysis.

• ZIP code 85020, the neighborhood just north of 85012 and 85014, has seen home prices soar almost 37 percent during the past year.

Bobby Lieb of HomeSmart Elite has been selling houses in uptown Phoenix for a few decades. He told me the area's many new restaurants are drawing more buyers, particularly younger ones.

"I am seeing a lot of new buyers who refused to move to the Biltmore and Central Phoenix because it was not cool a few years ago," he said "That feeling no longer exists because we are getting more and more new families here and also a younger demographic."

Several new condominium, apartment and other infill housing developments have recently gone up or are underway in central Phoenix. Infill land prices in the area have soared faster than any other part of the Valley as well during the past three years, land brokers say.

Developers say it's becoming more difficult to find vacant land in the area, so now many are redeveloping old buildings.

The latest restaurant project along Phoenix's 7th Street is the redevelopment of the former Crown Import Building, located between Missouri and Bethany Home roads.

Developers Dan Noma Jr., Buzz Gosnell and Niels Kreipke are spending $6 million to transform the craft and flower store into space with multiple retailers and eateries. Among them, a restaurant from Crudo's owners called Okra, which will mix southern cooking with Italian food

"Years ago, I used to box in Mack's Boys Gym in this very (Crown Imports) building," said Gosnell, who developed northeast Phoenix's popular resort, retail and residential project Kierland while with Woodbine Southwest.

"I'm a native Phoenician, and have always loved this area. I want to help it thrive."

It already is.