A joint venture, the McCallister Co. of Tucson and Houston-based Allied Realty Services Ltd, are building Mission de Oro, a $20-million multi-family complex with 304 units. The complex's 26, two-story buildings will be located on an 18-acre parcel at the northeast corner of East Speedway and Prudence Road on the east side of Tucson.

Construction on the property is expected to be completed by August 2002, with leasing beginning in November.

The complex will have a mix of one- and two-bedroom units that will rent for $550 to $800 per month, says Ross McCallister, head of McCallster Co. Amenities in the upscale apartments include nine-foot ceilings, track lighting, private balconies and patios and individual washers and dryers, as well as a community pool and spa, exercise facility, business center with computers and indoor play area for children.

The project is one of the few conventional apartment projects to be developed in the past few years. Tucson residents have been drawn away from apartment renting by inexpensive manufactured and affordable housing.

Most of the new apartment projects that have been built since the mid-1990s have been base-bones student housing near the University of Arizona campus or tax-credit properties built for low-income residents. Of the nine most recent starts, four were student housing, four were tax-credit driven and only one was conventional. At the start of 2001, the overall vacancy rate for apartments in Tucson was 8.3%, up a full percentage point from the quarter before.

The apartments are being designed by Acorn Associates Architecture LTD. Moruga Investments Inc., a Panamanian corporation with offices in Mexico City, is the landowner.