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[Editor's note: As of April 2011, the Centerpoint Condos on Mill Ave have been sold, renamed West 6th Street and turned into luxury rentals. Skip to the 4th paragraph if you are looking for the deets on the so-called Tuxedo Suicide]

So much for that. The Phoenix Business Journal is reporting that the sale of the abandoned Centerpoint condos looming over Mill Ave has fallen through. Now, mere months after everyone was high-fiving that an Ohio-based developer was going to turn the half-built towers into luxury apartments, the deal has imploded.

Then again, this project was probably doomed, if not from the beginning, at least from the day a prominent Valley businessman was found dead inside the master bedroom of his sprawling Phoenix mansion.

Long story short, the latest setback is Centerpoint’s new buyers have backed out of the $30M deal after the title holder refused to insure the potential owners against the $21M in claims brought by the various contractors who never got paid for the work they did on the project. Now the CEO of the company charged with selling this condo catastrophe is telling the Phx Biz Journal, “[The title company] led us down the wrong path. So now the lawyers are going to take over.” In other words, this hot mess is headed to court, and is not going to be completed ever anytime soon.

Towering 30- and 22-stories above Downtown Tempe, this project was originally conceived as hundreds of luxury condos, anchored by street-level restaurants and retail. (To be sold to all those millionaires just dying to live above a smallish college town and stumble home safely from Fat Tuesday, we’re guessing.) However, it all fell apart in mid 2008 after the developers, (who have their own shady past), decided they needed more money to complete the project. But the money never came through because just a few months later, in June 2008, the owner of Centerpoint’s lending company dressed up in his finest tuxedo inside his Arcadia mansion, curled up in bed with a life-sized cardboard cutout of his second wife, and then committed suicide by overdosing on alcohol, Oxycodone and Ambien.

Named Scott Coles (pictured at left with wife, Ashley), his so-called Tuxedo Suicide was quickly followed by the collapse of Coles’ company, Mortages Ltd. Once the largest lender in the state, you can read all about the rise and fall of the flamboyant Mr. Coles here. Or you can simply take a walk down Mill Ave., where the hulking remains of Coles’ and the developers’ hubris will be standing vacant for years to come.

Centerpoint image via John M. Quick‘s way-cool blog; Scott Cole image via Phx New Times

[Phx Biz Journal]

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