By Ron Davis – Reporter, Phoenix Business Journal.

A spike in new hires while staying busy on more than 100 active projects caused Stevens-Leinweber Construction to run out of space at its current office.


Jamie Godwin, president of the Valley-based general contractor, found the solution by purchasing an office building, located at 5045 N. 12th St. in Phoenix, for a new company headquarters. The firm will make building and tenant improvements and could possibly expand the building’s footprint in the future.

An entity led by Godwin purchased the 28,564-square-foot building for $3.85 million last October. Building improvements are already underway with the goal for Stevens-Leinweber’s more than 80 employees to be in the new 10,000-square-foot office by the end of the year.

“We are a homegrown Phoenix company that focuses solely on the Phoenix market. Being able to grow and serve our clients here is an honor, as is the opportunity to bring new life to this building,” Godwin said. “The creation of our new headquarters will allow SLC to do what we do best, which is to apply our expertise and creativity to help metro Phoenix commercial real estate achieve its highest and best use.”
The building improvements, which will cost about $2 million, include replacing the HVAC and the roof, installing a fire sprinkler system and renovating the common areas and courtyard, The tenant improvements planned for Stevens-Leinweber’s office will focus on employee-centric amenities such as adding skylights in open office areas, creating glass-lined private offices and conference spaces. The employee break room will include a beer tap, shuffleboard table and interactive golf arcade station.

Godwin said the plan is to be able to open the office by the end of the year. Stevens-Leinweber will be the general contractor and Phoenix-based McCarthy Nordburg is the architect.

Stevens-Leinweber staff will work from existing office until new project completed

The office building structure was built in 1964 and was last renovated in 1997. Godwin said the company had been looking for a new office since early 2022 and zeroed in on the building last year. Upon learning there was a bit more work that needed to be done to improve the building’s infrastructure during the due diligence last summer, Godwin stepped back from the deal to acquire the building.

Months later, Stevens-Leinweber was back at the negotiation table and landed seller concessions to offset the expenditures to make the improvements needed. Stevens-Leinweber closed on the building last fall.

The building is home to tenants including Pinnacle Family Services, accounting firm Abbott-Privee PLLC and law firm Hienton & Curry PLLC as well as a temporary satellite office for Stevens-Leinweber. The bulk of its employees are still working out the company’s current space at 730 E. Highland Ave.

The firm worked with Newmark Group Inc.’s Chris Krewson for tenant representation. The seller, 5045 Associates LLC, was represented by Avison Young’s Wally Hale and Drew Sampson.

Stevens-Leinweber has been operating out of the 7,844-square-foot space on Highland Ave, about a mile from its future space, since 2018.
“Toward the end of 2021, I began to realize that we’d have grown to the point where we were going to outgrow the space,” Godwin said. “The new space does provide some growth capacity within the footprint we’re taking, but our need to further expand will be market- and economy-driven. There’s quite a bit of unknown in front of us right now, I’d say over the next 12-24 months, with all the recession predictions and whether those really become reality or don’t … it’s really just a function of our client base and how active our client base is with new development opportunities and the leasing of office space.”
Godwin estimates the firm has about 115 ongoing projects at any given time through tenant improvement and ground-up jobs. Some of those include the tenant improvement build-out for Phoenix Logistics Center Two, a renovation of Lake Biltmore Corporate Center and the tenant improvements for Newmark’s new office at the Esplanade.
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