This fall, the 1960s Caravan Inn West is transforming into artsy apartments.

Plans for a blighted motel along historic Grand Avenue could reshape the entire look and feel of this once buzzing byway.

Historic Grand Avenue has had its share of past lives, and one of them is coming back, joining the roadway’s current iteration as an arts destination.

The 1960s-era Caravan Inn West, once part of a “motel row’’ that sprang up as motorists traversed the Valley along the diagonal avenue, is re-opening this fall as apartments geared toward artists or anyone else eager to be part of the Grand Avenue scene. Called the Oasis on Grand, the complex will have a decidedly creative feel with common gallery space, a small entertainment venue in the courtyard area and the option to operate art studios in apartments, thanks to commercial zoning on the property. Plans also call for an onsite bistro and possibly a market.

Rather than tear down the blighted property, owner Tom Carmody decided to salvage this part of Grand Avenue’s history and give it a new chapter. That earned the project two key advocates: the city of Phoenix, which kicked in a loan because of the project’s affordable housing component, and area residents and business owners breathing new life into Grand Avenue.

“We’re super excited about their project,” says Beatrice Moore, who runs the Kooky Krafts Shop on Grand Avenue and co-owns eight properties in the area. “Number one, it’s going to preserve an older structure that was at risk of being torn down, and number two, it will provide affordable living.... You can’t get a better combination than that.”

Lower Grand Avenue, roughly bounded by Seventh and 15th avenues and Roosevelt and Van Buren streets, has experienced a renaissance during the past two decades. It has seen an influx of artists and studios, restaurants and boutiques, as well as efforts to save and re-adapt older structures. The Oasis project, at the intersection of Grand Avenue, 15th Avenue and Roosevelt Street, will be one more draw to the area.

“The biggest thing we’re going to do is bring a lot of people to this one spot,” says Tim Sprague, co-founder of Habitat Metro, one of the development partners on the Oasis project. “It’s just going to create a vibe that I think will be great.”

Hopes were high when Grand Avenue first opened in 1888. The Phoenix Daily Herald newspaper announced the roadway’s arrival with a story headlined “Eighteen Miles of Elegant Avenue Opened. Straight as a Line; Level as a Floor,” according to a city of Phoenix historical survey.  

Grand Avenue stretched across the western Salt River Valley, providing access to the planned “Village of Alhambra” in Phoenix and “colony” townsites of Glendale and Peoria, according to the survey. The roadway provided the right-of-way for a railroad line that connected Phoenix and Prescott and easy access to the newly constructed Arizona Canal. Just as notable was Grand Avenue’s design, built at an angle and a stark contrast to the city’s traditional grid system for its streets.

Canal builder and land promoter W.J. Murphy led the effort to build Grand Avenue, with visions of capitalizing on the Arizona Canal’s water to develop the area. Murphy’s plans brought investors from around the country with hopes of cashing in.

In the decades that followed Grand’s opening, a range of development plans sprang from the roadway, from residential subdivisions to commercial operations to tourist enterprises. The latter brought auto courts, tourist cabins and motels such as the Caravan Inn.

The Caravan Inn West was actually the second in a chain of Caravan motels. The first, Caravan Inn East, was built at 34th and Van Buren streets, according to the March 1959 edition of Arizona Builder & Contractor. The planned Caravan West, built at a cost of $800,000, offered 100 rooms and a pool for lounging. The Caravan sign towering over the property featured, appropriately, a camel and robed rider.

Arizona Builder noted that “construction on Grand Ave. moves at a rapid pace and may, in the not too distant future, result in a ‘motel row’ from the terminus of Grand Ave. at 7th Ave. northwest to McDowell Rd.” Plans for another Grand Avenue hotel, the Continental Phoenix Hotel at Seventh Avenue, were also announced in 1959.

It’s not clear exactly when the Caravan Inn West opened, but the Arizona Builder reported that construction was to be completed in June 1959. The motel first showed up in a city of Phoenix directory in 1961, and by 1963, the property had become part of the glitzy Bali Hi hotel next door, according to Moore’s research.

In the late 1960s, a group of doctors bought the property with plans to open a convalescent home, but that never materialized. A few years later, possibly in 1971, the property became the Oasis Motor Hotel.

Carmody, a real estate investor and owner of Carmody Company, bought the property in 2007 after he was approached by the then-owner, who was looking to sell it. People were living at the Oasis and the motel was closed down as a condition of sale, he says.

Carmody, who has rehabilitated older residential and commercial properties in the city for the past two decades, already owned property across from the Oasis, so the purchase was a logical fit. Still, the motel, once a Grand Avenue gem with its blend of kitsch and modern architecture, had become a neighborhood eyesore.

Carmody brought Habitat Metro on board, and the group envisioned building condominiums. When the economy went south, they switched the focus to apartments.

The Oasis on Grand features 60 studio and one-bedroom apartments, with rents ranging from the low $400s to the low $700s. Thirty-six units are considered affordable housing as part of a deal with the city of Phoenix to receive a $3 million loan through HOME Program Funds, which come from the federal government to develop affordable housing. But the project appeals to the city on other fronts, too, says Phoenix housing director Kim Dorney.

“We are excited to participate in a project that will eliminate a blighted property and bring new vitality to the Grand Avenue community,” she says.

At full capacity, 90 people could live at the Oasis, which is located at the heart of the Roosevelt Street and Grand Avenue art scene. Artists who operate in-home studios out of their Oasis apartments can show their work as part of Phoenix’s popular First Fridays art walk, Sprague says.

Lower Grand Avenue is still home to a few motels, bygones of the earlier era, and Moore hopes they can be preserved and adapted. She sees Oasis’ live-work concept for artists as a model for other developments.

In a city where older buildings are often razed to make way for new developments, the Oasis project stands out for Carmody’s desire to work with what he’s got.

“It’s a building worth saving. We didn’t have concerns that the bones weren’t there,” Carmody says. “We need more of an appreciation for the past.”