Developer Matt Seaman has been working in this part of downtown Phoenix for more than a decade.
Through MetroWest Development and later Cardon Development, much of that work has been concentrated within just a few blocks of here.
Townhomes on 3rd brought 10 townhomes to Third Avenue, between Fillmore and Roosevelt. McKinley Row added 18 more townhomes at the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue and McKinley, with front stoops and ground-floor offices designed to fit into the surrounding historic neighborhood.
At First Avenue and Roosevelt, Union at Roosevelt added 80 apartments along with ground-floor restaurant and retail space directly across from the light rail station. The site had sat vacant for decades before it was developed.
And right here on Second Avenue, MetroWest also rehabilitated two long-vacant, city-owned historic houses. One of those properties was 816 North Second Avenue, just a few doors from where you’re standing now.
A lot of that work falls under what developers call infill: taking vacant or underused pieces of an existing neighborhood and putting housing, businesses and people back onto them.
Seaman once described the goal as “stitching the neighborhood together.”
That approach shows up again and again in the projects: homes facing the street, front stoops and outdoor spaces, garages pushed back, and development designed around walking and neighborhood life rather than turning away from it.
Eventually, that pattern reached this corner.
Residences on 2nd became another piece of the SoRo portfolio, shorthand for south of Roosevelt. Cardon later described McKinley Row as one of four attached-townhome subdivisions Seaman developed in the Roosevelt neighborhood, with Residences on 2nd as a similar follow-on project.
Taken together, these projects tell a pretty clear story about the way this part of downtown has filled back in, one vacant or underused parcel at a time.
Residences on 2nd is the newest chapter.