BUSINESS
THE MESA TRIBUNE | FEBRUARY 13, 2022
21
SEND YOUR BUSINESS NEWS TO PMARYNIAK@ TIMESPUBLICATIONS.COM TheMesaTribune.com
|
@EVTNow
/EVTNow
Schnepf Farms home developer has eye on the future BY PAUL MARYNIAK Tribune Executive Editor
R
ichard Felker keeps one eye on the ground and the other on the future. If that seems like an exaggeration, consider his track record. From managing and owning two family businesses in Milwaukee in the 1970s – one that sold furniture and the other that ran coin-operated washers and dryers – Felker started signing up university dormitories and apartment buildings for the latter. “I would call on apartment developers to get them to sign a lease with me put my laundry equipment into their buildings,” he recalled. “And that led me to say to myself, ‘Well, why don’t I try and get involved in real estate? So I became an entrepreneur who said, ‘well, let’s build a couple of buildings and see how it goes.’” How it went is this: Felker sits atop The Empire Group, a Scottsdale company that over 40 years has accumulated more than $1.5 billion in assets and built a legacy of commercial, single family and multifamily residential and industrial development.
Now, he is riding the wave of a multibillion trend that experts say will radically change the single-family housing landscape forever. Empire’s announcement in December that it will build 144 single-family rental homes on 14 acres of Schnepf Farms – the celebrated Queen Creek agrotainment venue best known for its peach festivals and annual October Pumpkin and Chili Party – was just the latest in a series of build-to-rent communities Empire has on the drawing board, already is building or has finished. The company’s first was the Village at Harvard, a nearly fully occupied 184-home community in Goodyear. Then there’s the 208-home Village at Olive Marketplace in Glendale that’s 65% leased and 50% occupied. A 194-home community is rising at Camelback Road and 107th Street, as is a 180-home development in Avondale along with the 272-home Village at Paseo de Le Luces in Tolleson. The Village at Schnepf Farms is the company’s seventh in the Valley and one of 21
see FELKER page 22
Developer Richard Felker has a firm footing in a growing trend in new-home construction: building houses not to sell them but to rent them. (Courtesy of Empire Group)
Mesa trampoline park hopping with fun BY DANA TRUMBULL Tribune Staff Writer
Nikki Schachtel and Rob Genet own Krazy Air Trampoline Park in Mesa. (David Minton/
Tribune Staff Photographer)
T
he only thing “up in the air” at Krazy Air Trampoline Park is kids. And with 28,000 square feet filled wall-to-wall with trampolines, foam pits, aerial silks, jousting, slam dunk basketball, dodge ball, a ninja course and more at the park, 4310 E. McDowell Road, Mesa, the kids will stay there for hours. Even the floors between sections are spongy soft, so wherever a child lands between jumps, it will be kid-friendly. Perhaps the best part about the park,
though, is that, while their kids play, parents have the option to hang out in the comfortable lobby chatting with friends, playing on their phone, or getting some work done online using the free wi-fi. They can head to the “as quiet as it gets here” area to relax in massage chairs, or they can tap into their inner child and jump with the kids. They can even go run errands or indulge in a date-night dinner, while the young-at-heart staff at Krazy Air watch and play games with the kids. Every jumper must have a waiver on
see KRAZY AIR page 26
