Arizona Beach Club was once a vibrant site of Tempe nightlife, a popular weekend hangout for students.
Now it's a vacant, graffiti-stained building wrapped by overgrown plants on the otherwise-booming Tempe Town Lake shore.
Within two months it will be nothing. The old Arizona Beach Club and Club Rio building will be destroyed to make way for a large multi-use complex.
Located on the northern bank of Tempe Town Lake just west of Rural Road, the site has long been popular with students.
"I'm used to going there on weekends with my friends," said Jenn Bals, an interior design sophomore. "It's close. It's somewhere you can take a cab to."
The club closed late last semester, and former operators did not return repeated requests for comment.
"I'm really disappointed," Bals said. "There aren't a lot of under-21 clubs in the Tempe area."
But speech and hearing science sophomore Erica Rickles said she will not miss the club.
"It was kind of trashy," she said. "It was just kind of like, run-down, and messy, and I didn't like it when I went."
After months of vacancy, the building has become a safety issue, said Buzz Schrage, a spokesman for Namwest, the Phoenix developer that now owns the site.
"Once the Arizona Beach Club pulled out, that's when the safety issues occurred," he said. "People have been breaking in."
Namwest, a newly formed Phoenix development company, made headlines in December 2004 when it outbid more well-known and established competitors to acquire the property.
Schrage, said the project is still "at the infancy stage."
The company is not yet sure exactly what it will build on the site, Schrage said, but it will probably involve some combination of residential, retail and office space.
It will not be a club, he said.
"[We're working on] putting together something that fits and makes sense for the city and for us," he said.
The new project is one of several similar projects that have cropped up along the lake's perimeter.
"The interest around the lake is continuing," said Chris Salomone, Tempe's community development manager.
Development plans are in the works for most of the lake's shore, he said. ASU's property on the south bank is the primary exception, but the University is planning future development there, he added.
Perimeter development was slow until recently when development plans began to pour into city offices.
Most of the recent development has been on the south side of the lake, Salomone said. The former Arizona Beach Club site expands that
development to the north shore.
Reach the reporter at: jonathan.cooper@asu.edu.
