The Timeline

Phase One: The ACA Comes Looking

1. November 21, 2025 The ACA reaches out first.

   Karyn MacVean, the ACA’s Senior Real Estate Coordinator, contacts Robert Inglhofer at Pivot. The ACA is leasing roughly 35,000 square feet at 100 N. 7th Avenue and is looking for new office and conference space. Pivot did not solicit this. The ACA called.

2. November 25, 2025 MacVean tours 200 East Van Buren in person.

   The ACA walks the building before issuing any solicitation.

3. December 1, 2025 The ACA issues its formal Request for Proposal.

   A written RFP for approximately 25,000 SF of office space plus approximately 10,000 SF of dedicated conference space, five-year term, commencing around March 1, 2026. Responses due December 5. The RFP asks bidders to redline the form and return it.

   The RFP contains no scoring criteria, no weights, no evaluation methodology and no “best value” award language. Read it yourself on the Documents page. That absence is the root of everything that follows.

Phase Two: Pivot Spends Money and Says Yes to Everything

1. December 2, 2025 Pivot hires architects and engineers for the ACA.

   APD Engineering and POCA Architecture are retained to draw ACA-specific concept plans for Floors 8 and 9. Pivot paid APD Engineering $6,695 for work that existed only because the ACA asked for it.

2. December 11–12, 2025 Pricing goes over. Plans are delivered.

   Pivot quotes $24.00 per square foot per year plus $1.10 per square foot in CAM, with parking at $110 per space. The concept plans are completed and sent.

3. December 15, 2025 Pivot submits its formal RFP response.

   Floors 8 and 9: 51,502 rentable square feet. Full-service rate. Five-year term. Landlord-delivered turn-key build-out at the landlord’s cost. Operating expenses folded into base rent. Exactly the structure the RFP asked for.

4. December 18, 2025 ACA leadership tours the building.
5. December 29, 2025 The ACA sends four new demands.

   MacVean relays requests from ACA leadership: confirm visitor parking at the Chase garage; grant “a large number of hours for parking validation instead of 6 valet serviced events”; rework the proposal to 35,000 SF; put all ACA staff parking in the 2nd Street garage with reserved stalls for executives.

6. December 30, 2025 (one day later) Pivot says yes to all four.

   1,800 full-day parking validations. The 35,000 SF reconfiguration. The 2nd Street garage with 15 reserved executive spaces. In writing, in twenty-four hours.

7. January 2026 Pivot gives away 10,000 square feet.

   Negotiations continue over layout and configuration. Pivot offers roughly 50,000 contiguous square feet while charging rent on only 40,000. Ten thousand square feet, free, on top of a rate that was already the lowest in the competition.

   MacVean names “Ken” and “Lauren” as the people reviewing the proposal.

8. January 30, 2026 Pivot stages a 200-chair mock event because the ACA asked.

   An on-site Conference Set-Up Review at 200 East Van Buren. More than 200 chairs, physically set, to prove the conference space could hold the crowd the ACA said it hosts. The ACA watched Pivot do this.

   Four months later the ACA’s scoring matrix gave 200 EVB a 2 out of 8 on “Conference Center Fit.”

Phase Three: The Lights Go Out

Entries marked below are drawn from documents ACA produced in the litigation on August 7, 2026. Pivot did not know of them at the time.

1. February 27, 2026 “Checking with leadership on next steps.”
2. March 11–12, 2026 (not known to Pivot at the time) ACA models the Collier Center deal it would later sign.

   ACA builds amortization models of its lease-termination exposure using a $32.50 base rate and nine months of abatement. Those are the economics of the executed Collier Center lease. Its working comparison contains tabs for 201 East Washington and Renaissance Square only. Pivot is not in it.

3. March 16, 2026 The ACA mentions, for the first time, another property.

   Nearly four months after the RFP went out, and after Pivot had spent money, redrawn plans twice, discounted its rent and staged a demonstration event.

4. April 14, 2026 Pivot asks to match or beat any competing offer. It is never given the chance.

   MacVean says she will know whether there is still an opportunity after the ACA Board Executive Committee meets the following Monday. Pivot never hears back.

5. Mid-April 2026 The ACA stops communicating.

   No award notice. No rejection notice. No debrief. No score. Nothing.

   ACA’s August 7, 2026 brief states that Pivot’s proposal was “no longer under consideration” in April. No Executive Committee meeting was noticed between February 26 and June 12.

6. April 22, 2026 (not known to Pivot at the time) The deal is papered.

   A CBRE letter agreement states that ACA “has agreed on a proposal to lease” the Collier Center, refers to a Letter of Intent “executed in parallel,” and fixes an August 1 commencement deadline. The same agreement requires the landlord to grant a lease option to Aurion Capital, which manages ACA’s venture-studio partner.

7. April 23 and 27, 2026 (not known to Pivot at the time) ACA’s vendors walk the space.

   Information-technology and cabling vendors tour interim space on the ninth floor at 201 East Washington. This is six weeks before the meeting ACA describes as the selection.

8. May 6, 2026 (not known to Pivot at the time) ACA’s Chief Operating Officer signs the Letter of Intent.

   The Proposal to Lease commits ACA to 44,734 rentable square feet for 93 months at $32.50 per square foot full service from month ten, with months one through nine abated, a turnkey build-out of roughly $100 per square foot, free interim space on the ninth floor, and 179 parking stalls.

   This is five weeks before the meeting ACA describes to the Court as the selection. No noticed public-body action preceded the signature, and no Board resolution delegating that authority has been produced.

9. May 12, 2026 (not known to Pivot at the time) The same officer signs the collateral agreement.

   The instrument under which the landlord grants a lease option to Aurion Capital, which manages ACA’s venture-studio partner. The briefing memorandum later given to the Executive Committee does not disclose the condition.

10. Throughout: the broker question ACA told bidders it had no broker.

    The December 1 RFP states that ACA “is represented in this transaction exclusively by” its own Senior Real Estate Coordinator, who “shall serve the Tenant as its sole and exclusive agent.”

    CBRE prepared the April 22 letter agreement. ACA later told the Phoenix Business Journal that a CBRE broker “represented the ACA.” The same CBRE brokers appear in the documents as leasing brokers for the Collier Center landlord. No engagement letter, commission agreement or agency disclosure has been produced.

    The competing One North Central proposal, at $33.00 full service, was priced “based upon no outside brokerage commission to be paid.”

Phase Four: Pivot Finds Out From a Broker

1. June 1, 2026 A commercial broker tells Pivot the ACA is going to the Collier Center.

   Not the ACA. A broker.

2. June 3, 2026 Pivot asks again to match or beat. And an ACA board member explains the real standard.

   ACA Board member Jack Selby, by text message: “Hard to compete with the value add – and brand – of Sumitomo.”

   Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, a subsidiary of the Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corporation, owns the Collier Center. “Brand” was not a criterion in the RFP. It is, however, remarkably close to the matrix line item called “Building ownership strength.”

3. June 4, 2026 Two answers arrive on the same day.

   MacVean writes that ACA leadership “remains focused on their negotiations with another building.”

   Separately, Chris Kelly, a campaign manager and fundraiser, relays that the ACA selected the Collier Center because Hitachi Global was working with congressional candidate John Trobough on a proposed Arizona investment initiative, and the ACA wanted to show “good faith” in connection with it. Kelly adds: “Not the answer you wanted, but that’s what I was given.”

   This account is an allegation in Pivot’s verified complaint, supported by a sworn declaration attaching the text messages. The ACA denies that improper considerations drove its decision.

4. June 5, 2026 Pivot demands the records.

   A written demand for board agendas, minutes, resolutions, approvals, executive-session notices and materials, proposals, evaluation materials and financial analyses. It also demands preservation of records and suspension of the lease pending review.

5. June 9, 2026 (four days later) A scoring matrix carries this date.

   The only scoring document that has ever surfaced is titled “Project Home Base – Office Lease Comparison Sheet updated 6.9.2026.” That is roughly six months after the proposals came in, and four days after Pivot demanded the procurement records.

   The ACA has never explained when the matrix was created, who scored it, or what it was “updated” from. See the full teardown →

6. June 19, 2026 The ACA denies the protest. It shows nothing.

   General Counsel Scott A. Roney writes that the ACA “followed a robust and diligent process” and that Pivot’s elimination “was based on material and substantive evaluation.”

   The letter attaches no scoring matrix. No written evaluation. No comparative analysis. No selection memorandum. No best-value determination. No board minutes. No approval. It faults Pivot for relying on hearsay while declining to produce the documents that would settle the question.

Phase Five: Court

1. July 13, 2026 The CoStar listing for the Collier Center shows $37.00 per square foot.

   Captured by sworn declaration and filed as an exhibit.

2. July 6, 2026 ACA executes the lease.

   Day seventeen of the thirty-day appeal period ACA now says Pivot was required to use, and after Pivot had demanded in writing that ACA not finalize the transaction pending review. ACA had already refused a stay in its June 19 letter.

3. July 15, 2026 Pivot 200 EVB LLC sues the Arizona Commerce Authority.

   Maricopa County Superior Court, Case No. CV2026-029283. Four counts: violation of the Arizona Open Meeting Law; failure to comply with A.R.S. § 41-2501 and the ACA’s own Procurement and Grants Policy; violation of the Arizona Constitution’s Gift Clause; and violation of the Arizona Public Records Law. An application for a preliminary injunction is filed the same day.

4. August 7, 2026 ACA opposes the injunction, and produces documents.

   ACA tells the Court that Pivot competed through a public procurement process and that ACA created a formal scoring matrix in compliance with its policies. The scoring matrix is produced for the first time.

   The same production contains the April letter agreement, the May instruments, the vendor walk-through logs, the June 12 board packet, and ten native copies of ACA’s comparison workbook. Nine of them contain no scoring at all.

5. August 12, 2026 ACA moves to dismiss, the evening before the hearing.

   The motion argues Pivot failed to exhaust an administrative appeal. It states that Pivot knew it had lost by June 1, protested on June 5, and that ACA selected another proposer on June 12. It gives two different dates for the appeal deadline. It does not address Count IV.

   The filings, side by side →