Location and Traffic: 0.3 Miles Apart, Two Points Different

Start here

200 East Van Buren to the Collier Center is a six-minute walk

Both towers sit on North 2nd Street in downtown Phoenix, three blocks apart. Google Maps puts the walk at 0.3 miles. You can see one from the other.

0.3 mibetween the two buildings

13destinations measured across Arizona

4 / 6200 EVB’s traffic score

6 / 6Collier Center’s traffic score

The measurement

Thirteen destinations, and not one of them is more than a mile apart

We ran both addresses against thirteen destinations across Arizona on Google Maps with live traffic, sampling repeatedly through a Monday morning. These are Google’s numbers, not ours, and every route is linked so you can re-run any of them yourself.

Read the times as ranges, not as stopwatch readings

Live traffic estimates move. Sample the airport run repeatedly and each building reads somewhere between 8 and 10 minutes — and which one is “faster” changes depending on the minute you ask.

That is the finding, not a caveat. Two towers three blocks apart cannot have a stable, measurable commute difference, and repeated sampling proves it. The durable column below is distance, which does not fluctuate.

Driving distance and time — sampled Monday, August 3, 2026, between 6:40 and 8:45 a.m. Phoenix time
Destination	From 200 EVB 200 E. Van Buren	From Collier Center 201 E. Washington	Which is closer	Check it live
Arizona State Capitol	1.7 mi 5 min	1.6 mi 5 min	Within 0.1 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Phoenix Sky Harbor	3.8 mi 8–10 min	3.5 mi 8–10 min	Collier by 0.3 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Mill Avenue, Tempe	9.2 mi 22 min	9.2 mi 22 min	Identical	200 EVB · Collier
ASU Tempe campus	10.5 mi 15 min	10.7 mi 15 min	200 EVB by 0.2 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Old Town Scottsdale	12.8 mi 22 min	11.8 mi 22 min	Collier by 1.0 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Intel Ocotillo, Chandler	23.7 mi 29–30 min	23.4 mi 29–30 min	Collier by 0.3 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Goodyear West valley	25.6 mi 36 min	25.9 mi 38 min	200 EVB by 0.3 mi	200 EVB · Collier
TSMC Arizona North Phoenix	26.8 mi 31 min	27.1 mi 33 min	200 EVB by 0.3 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Anthem North valley	32.0 mi 37 min	32.3 mi 38 min	200 EVB by 0.3 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Prescott	99.4 mi 1 hr 49 min	99.8 mi 1 hr 50 min	200 EVB by 0.4 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Tucson	114 mi 1 hr 45 min	114 mi 1 hr 44 min	Identical	200 EVB · Collier
Sedona	117 mi 1 hr 57 min	118 mi 1 hr 58 min	200 EVB by 1.0 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Flagstaff	144 mi 2 hr 13 min	145 mi 2 hr 14 min	200 EVB by 1.0 mi	200 EVB · Collier
Thirteen destinations	Closer on 7	Closer on 4	Identical on 2. Largest gap anywhere: one mile.

Thirteen destinations. Not one differs by more than a mile.

From the Capitol to Flagstaff, from Goodyear to Tucson, the two buildings are functionally the same address. 200 East Van Buren is closer to seven of the thirteen, the Collier Center to four, and two are identical. The largest gap on the entire list is one mile, on a 144-mile drive.

There is no defensible way to turn that into a two-point scoring difference — in either direction.

Where a real pattern does show up: north and west

The differences are small, but they are not random. The Collier Center holds its slight edge only going east and southeast, where Jefferson Street feeds straight onto I-10 eastbound.

Everything north and west favours 200 East Van Buren — Goodyear, Anthem, TSMC, Prescott, Sedona, Flagstaff. Van Buren runs both directions and connects straight to I-17 and I-10 westbound, without the one-way detour the Collier Center starts every trip with.

Method. Captured on Google Maps with live traffic on Monday, August 3, 2026, between 6:40 and 8:45 a.m. Phoenix time. Both origins were run against each destination minutes apart, so the comparison is like-for-like, and the short in-town routes were sampled more than once. Times are Google’s “best route” figures, transcribed without adjustment; where repeated samples differed, the observed range is shown.

What the matrix got backwards

Getting in and out

Mileage is not what makes an office work for a 140-person staff. Three things do: how you get out of the building, what happens on event days, and how quickly you actually reach a freeway. On all three, the ACA scored the worse building higher.

Head to head on the three things that matter
	201 E. Washington — Collier Center The building the ACA chose	200 E. Van Buren The building it turned down
Arterial egress	Washington Street is one-way westbound. Anyone heading north, south or east must first navigate a grid of one-way streets to reach an on-ramp. Daily friction on every trip.	Van Buren is a major bi-directional arterial. Staff and visitors can turn east or west immediately on leaving the garage, making the merge onto 7th Street efficient.
Event-day resilience The critical failure point	Sits in the immediate blast zone of the Suns arena and Chase Field. On game and concert days, afternoon traffic on Washington and Jefferson comes to a standstill — trapping staff in the parking garages.	On the northern edge of the downtown core, largely outside the event gridlock. Staff leaving at 5:00 p.m. get consistent commute times regardless of what is happening downtown.
Freeway proximity	Close on a map, slow in practice. The one-way routing needed to reach the I-10 East or I-17 South on-ramps takes noticeably longer at PM peak.	Exceptional. Straight to the I-10 / 7th Street interchange, or due west to pick up I-17.

Arterial egress: one building can only turn one way

201 East Washington Street sits on Washington Street, which is one-way westbound through downtown Phoenix. Washington and Jefferson form a one-way pair — Washington carries traffic west, Jefferson carries it east — and both also carry the Valley Metro light rail, which takes lanes and constrains turns.

From the Collier Center’s front door you can drive in exactly one direction: west. Everything else — north, south, east, and every freeway ramp that matters — means working back through a grid of one-way streets first.

A test anyone can run in thirty seconds

Ask Google Maps to drive you three blocks east along each building’s own street. Same distance, same direction, same neighbourhood.

Trip	Straight line	Google’s actual route	Why
200 E. Van Buren → 455 E. Van Buren	0.3 mi	0.4 mi straight up Van Buren	Van Buren carries traffic both ways
201 E. Washington → 455 E. Washington	0.3 mi	0.5 mi detoured onto Jefferson	You cannot drive east on Washington at all

To go three blocks east from the building the ACA chose, Google takes you off its street entirely. To make the identical move from 200 East Van Buren, you drive straight there.

This is not a rounding error. It is a small tax on every trip: every airport run, every drive to the Capitol, every visitor arriving for one of the 200-guest events the ACA says it hosts regularly. Multiply the wrong-way start by 140 staff, twice a day, for five years.

Freeway proximity: close on a map is not the same as fast

Both buildings look equally close to the freeway system on a map. They are not equally quick to reach it.

From 200 East Van Buren, drivers leave the garage onto a two-way arterial and go straight at the target: east or west on Van Buren, a clean merge onto 7th Street for the I-10 interchange, or due west to pick up I-17. One decision, one direction, no backtracking.

From 201 East Washington, every one of those moves starts by going the wrong way. Reaching I-10 East or I-17 South means working through the one-way pair first, and at PM peak — when those same one-way streets are absorbing everyone else leaving downtown — that routing costs noticeably more time. The map distance is nearly identical. The lived commute is not.

Event-day resilience

The critical failure point: 201 E. Washington is inside the blast zone

This is the part of the location analysis that should have decided it. The Collier Center is wedged between a Major League Baseball park, an NBA arena and the Phoenix Convention Center. On event days, afternoon traffic on Washington and Jefferson comes to a standstill — and staff who parked that morning are trapped in the garages until it clears.

Walking distance to the event venues
Venue	From Collier Center	From 200 EVB	What happens there
Mortgage Matchup Center 201 E. Jefferson St. — formerly Footprint Center	0.2 mi 4 min walk	0.5 mi	Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury, plus concerts and touring shows. Directly across Jefferson Street.
Chase Field 401 E. Jefferson St.	0.3 mi 6 min walk	0.5 mi 11 min walk	Arizona Diamondbacks, roughly 48,000 seats.
Phoenix Convention Center 100 N. 3rd St.	Adjacent	0.4 mi	Major conventions and trade shows year-round.

It is well more than 140 event days a year

People assume “a few game nights.” Here is the actual arithmetic, counting only regular-season home dates at the two venues within a six-minute walk:

Team	Venue	Regular-season home dates
Arizona Diamondbacks (MLB)	Chase Field	81
Phoenix Suns (NBA)	Mortgage Matchup Center	41
Phoenix Mercury (WNBA)	Mortgage Matchup Center	~22
Regular season only		~144

Roughly 144 dates before a single playoff game, concert, touring show, convention or trade show. Add those and the building the ACA chose sits inside an event footprint on the majority of nights in the year — and that is before the arena next door hosts the 2026 NCAA Women’s Final Four and the 2027 NBA All-Star Game, both inside the ACA’s lease term.

What a game day actually does to that block

From mid-afternoon, the streets immediately around the Collier Center stop working. Jefferson and Washington back up. The one-way grid funnels every departing car onto the same few turns. Garages fill with event parkers and switch to flat event pricing. Curb lanes close, and pedestrian crowds take the crossings.

The practical effect on a 140-person staff is simple: an employee who parked at 8:00 a.m. and tries to leave at 5:00 p.m. on a Diamondbacks night is not going anywhere quickly. They are queuing inside a garage that is also emptying thousands of fans onto the same three streets. That is not a commute you can plan around, and it repeats well over a hundred times a year.

200 East Van Buren sits four blocks north, on the edge of the core and outside that footprint. Staff leaving at 5:00 p.m. get the same drive home whether or not there is a game.

And the matrix scored it perfect

Visitor Parking Ease: Collier Center 5 out of 5. 200 EVB 3 out of 5.

Event Parking Validations: Collier Center 7 out of 7. 200 EVB 3 out of 7 — despite having confirmed in writing on December 30, 2025 1,800 full-day parking validations, staff parking in the 2nd Street garage, and fifteen reserved executive spaces, exactly as the ACA had requested the day before.

Twelve points, awarded backwards.

The other side of the ledger

What the ACA walked away from

200 East Van Buren sits in the part of downtown Phoenix that is actually trying to become an innovation district — which is, on paper, precisely what the Arizona Commerce Authority exists to build.

ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus is a short walk north and west — nursing, public service, journalism, and thousands of students.
Arizona Center is immediately adjacent: restaurants, retail, entertainment, the redeveloped plaza, and lodging.
The Van Buren corridor and the Roosevelt Row arts district sit just north.
A recently renovated, roughly 250,000-square-foot Class A tower with well over 100,000 square feet available and a conference facility seating more than 200 — demonstrated to ACA staff on January 30, 2026.
Owned by Phoenix residents who reinvest here, not by an overseas parent.
On a two-way arterial with direct access in all four directions.

The amenities the ACA scored 4 out of 5

The matrix gave 200 EVB 4 out of 5 on Property Amenities and 4 out of 5 on Area Amenities. The Collier Center got a perfect 5 on both. Here is what tenants at 200 East Van Buren get, at no additional charge:

A free gym and locker room, open to every employee in the building
Showers
A game room with a pool table and an arcade
A conference centre available at no charge
24/7 security patrolling the building and the main entrance
Building access 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with janitorial included
Arizona Center next door for food, retail, entertainment and lodging

At the Collier Center, on information and belief, both the fitness facility and the conference facilities are paid amenities rather than included ones. If that is right, the ACA scored the building that charges for these things higher than the building that gives them away — and taxpayers pay for them twice, once in the higher rent and again at the door.

Pivot had also pitched the ACA on standing up an AI and innovation hub in the building — connecting Arizona businesses, startups, the universities, workforce programmes and emerging technology companies in one place, with the state’s economic development agency as the anchor tenant.

None of that appears anywhere in the scoring. There is no criterion for ecosystem, for proximity to the universities, for local reinvestment, or for whether the lease advances the ACA’s statutory mission. There is, however, a six-point criterion for the landlord’s “ownership strength.”

Back to the scoring matrix Why we’re doing this