People get nervous when a complex changes ownership, Connolly said. “Look at this, it’s beautiful!” she exclaimed of one apartment’s bedroom flooring. She was especially proud of the new glass-tiled backsplashes in some of the units’ kitchens. We’re going to kick it up a notch.”Ĭonnolly pointed to a sign printed with the words “Poop litter.” “We’re very pet-friendly,” she explained. “It was much more artsy in his day,” she said of Hamburger. “I can’t wait to move out of Zazu!” Yelped yet another. “I feel really bad for the residents who are currently stuck there waiting for their lease to end so they can move.” “Needless to say, I did not renew my lease,” carped another Yelper. The laundry room was dirty, the washers and dryers always broken no trees meant no shade and hotter apartments. Zazu no longer sprayed for insects, one Yelper complained on the review forum’s site. Yelp recently erupted into a chorus of complaints. “Not anymore,” she said, then snorted smoke. Her unit costs her $150 more than it did last year. Rent went up, and morale went down, said the woman with striped hair. The pink fabric walls of the screening room will soon become Zazu history. The Hollywood clubhouse, she said, is used for storage. “We’re planning to donate that,” said Ileana Connolly during a recent Monday morning tour of the grounds.Ĭonnolly is Zazu’s new senior regional manager, and “that” is the gaudy and much-loved stage that dwarfed the complex’s newly denuded garden. Its façade was whitewashed and the entryway greenery uprooted, replaced with a pair of wee, spindly potted palms. The new owners stripped Zazu Pannee Park Regent of its butterfly wings and most of its name, rechristening it Zazu Apartment Homes. The sadness grew like Topsy after Hamburger sold the complex in May to a Canadian outfit. “Then after Eric’s husband died, there was sadness there.” “It was always this really happy, creative place to live or visit,” said Carlson, former art director for Phoenix New Times. We stayed for six months.”Ĭarlson said Hamburger provided housing for visiting artists of Arizona Theatre Company and Arizona Opera, hosted meet-and-greets with actors, and catered to an eclectic crowd of performers and arty types. Kim saw the outdoor stage and that was it. They said there were actors and singers living there who gave impromptu performances. “They gave us a tour of the place and told us it was an artist colony. “It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before,” remembered graphic artist Tom Carlson, who lived at Zazu Pannee while he and his wife, Kim, were deciding whether to move to Phoenix in 2015. Above a lush landscape of bottle brush and date palms loomed a 40-foot, handpainted theatrical stage with a proscenium arch and trompe l’oeil orchestra. Hamburger’s overhaul brought colossal, Barbie-leg-pink metal butterfly wings that sprouted on either side of an entrance dwarfed by bright bougainvillea.īeyond the wings, faux glam and theatrics bloomed: a private screening room with walls upholstered in shiny, hot pink fabric a faux “beach” duned with sand a swimming pool brooked by a Hollywood-styled clubhouse. “Now it’s just another boring apartment complex.”īuilt in 1953 and renovated in 2006 by developer and arts supporter Eric Hamburger, the complex became a haven for creative types looking to lease, rather than own, a midtown home. Drag queens! You could fly your freak flag,” she said of the place where she’d lived for more than a year. Gays and people walking around singing all the time. The young woman complained that they were ruining a once-great place to live. “Those people” were the new owners and management team. “Over there” was the former Zazu Pannee Park Regent, a legendary local apartment community that catered to creative types.
“I have to live there for a while, and I don’t want trouble from those people.” “I don’t want anyone to know I’m talking about that place,” she muttered, then pointed her chin across the street. Her still-brightly dyed buzz-cut shone with the memory of neon stripes. She had dressed the night before as a punk rocker. She lit a tight, hand-rolled cigarette and leaned against the door of a shiny car parked on East Osborn Road. “Nothing good ever lasts,” huffed the young woman with day-after-Halloween hair. This story was originally published on November 11, 2018.
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