David Wichner Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 12:00 am

Social services provider Providence Service Corp. says it will relocate its corporate headquarters to downtown Tucson from its current east-central location by this summer.

Providence – one of Tucson’s few publicly traded companies – said it will remodel and lease the vacant building at 64 E. Broadway, at the southwest corner of North Scott Avenue and West Broadway. It is across the street from the site of UniSource Energy Corp.’s planned new headquarters.

Providence is now headquartered at 5524 E. Fourth St., just east of North Craycroft Road.

Providence plans to move its executive and corporate staff of about 50 people as soon as the remodeling is finished, the company said in a news release.

UniSource, parent of Tucson Electric Power Co. and the only Tucson-based company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, plans to move from the tower that bears its name at 1 S. Church Ave. to a new building at 88 E. Broadway by the end of 2011.

“This will put two of Tucson’s public companies side by side and should further support the downtown area as a developing business environment,” Providence Chairman and CEO Fletcher McCusker said in a news release.

Providence has been traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market since 2003.

McCusker cited recent improvements downtown, such as the Scott Avenue streetscape, Rialto block facade improvements, new restaurants, retail and fitness space “along with the promise of a more friendly business environment” as factors that helped persuade the company to relocate.

The planned headquarters building is owned by Ron and Patricia Schwabe. Providence is leasing the property through Peach Properties, which is also owned by the Schwabes.

“The commitment of one of the biggest businesses in Tucson is huge” for downtown redevelopment, Ron Schwabe said.

He noted that the company’s employees will join other downtown workers that form a “captive” clientele for restaurants and other businesses in the area.

Mayor Bob Walkup said he hopes that Providence’s relocation will be “another spark to get local and national businesses to see the value and long term prospects of a downtown Tucson location.”

The mayor’s office, along with the Downtown Tucson Partnership, Madden Media and Tucson Electric Power, were actively involved in recruiting Providence to move downtown, the company said.

Providence, which provides counseling, nonemergency medical transportation and other social services under government contracts, employs more than 11,000 people nationwide.

DID YOU KNOW

The building at 64 E. Broadway, dubbed “The Scott,” was originally built in 1909 and added onto in 1919, according to Peach Properties.

The building was occupied by a gold-weighing business and later housed doctors’ offices and a pharmacy. The most recent tenant was the nonprofit Southern Arizona Legal Aid.

Posted at http://www.azstarnet.com/business/local/article_96335ce3-a3d6-518b-9112-09404ce42c29.html

Firestone Gallery coming to “New” Old Market

By Donovan Durband

Ron Schwabe has made a positive impact on the Downtown streetscape for over twenty years now. His latest two projects are just the most recent in a series of quiet, subtle, but dramatic improvements to historic Downtown buildings that had been overlooked by others.

The newly-renovated Old Market Inn, most recently home of the Arizona Glass & Mirror Company, at 403 N. 6th Ave., joins two neighboring Schwabe projects that have created an island of vitality in the Warehouse District.
The 1880 Old Market space features wood trusses, exposed brick inside and out, with original painted signs from the grocer, cigar purveyor and meat markets that were there before and after the turn of the 20th century.

Schwabe was approached by businesspeople interested in opening bars and microbreweries in Old Market, but it will be long-time downtown gallery owner Eric Firestone who will lease the entire building for a gallery that he plans to turn into a destination on the national art circuit.

He keeps his pulse on the art scene in New York, San Francisco, and Miami, but says, “My heart is in Tucson, where I’ve had galleries since I was 22.”

Firestone is excited to have what he describes as dramatic space, expansive enough for large canvases, sculpture, and other Modernist Contemporary media and plans to open in early November.

“One North Fifth Apartments…six-story high rise, Hotel Congress across the street, soon-to-open On a Roll two blocks away.” ~Tucson Citizen, August 25, 2008.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/frontpage/94869.php

“The owner of Peach Properties and other partners have invested about $9 million into the renovation and additional construction of the former Martin Luther King apartments in Downtown Tucson.” ~Arizona Public Media, January 6, 2009

http://ondemand.azpm.org/videoshorts/watch/2009/1/6/kuat-dowtown-development

“Schwabe has earned a reputation as a landowner who can successfully renovate and market art space.” ~ Tucson Weekly, September 04, 2008

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/Currents/Content?oid=oid%3A114952

“While other downtown housing projects hit varied stumbling blocks, Williams & Dame Development came from Portland, Ore., saw downtown, partnered with local real estate company Peach Properties and summarily started and finished converting the former MLK into One North Fifth.” ~Tucson Citizen, August 25, 2008

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/frontpage/94869.php

“Ranked No. 42 in The Top 50 Affordable Housing Developers”~ Affordable Housing Finance, May 2007

http://www.housingfinance.com/ahf/articles/2007/may/TOPDEVELOPERS-5-0507.htm

“Cost Versus Culture
Tucson’s Warehouse District fights an uphill battle to survive

As interest in the Warehouse District grew, the private sector began to invest in the fight to save an “old town” that is uniquely Tucson. Thanks to folks like businessman Mark Berman, artist Susan Gamble and her sister Lesley, investor Ron Schwabe and many others, several buildings directly north of the ADOT-owned properties were purchased and rehabilitated for artist uses. These include the Davis Dominguez Gallery, Santa Theresa Tile Works, DeWitt Designs furniture and the Gallery at 6th and 6th, located in an old Firestone store.” ~Tucson Weekly, March 01, 2007

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/Currents/Content?oid=93099

“Another investment group, Ron Schwabe and two partners, who had previously converted warehouses into arts spaces in Portland, purchased Tucson’s Firestone and Bookman Auto Parts buildings and is actively rehabbing the combined 38,000 sf into artists’ rental studios and retail space.” ~ New Village Press

http://www.newvillage.net/Journal/Issue1/1artintucson.html