Two brothers paid $3 million at auction for 127.5 acres of state land in the rapidly growing Corona de Tucson area on the far Southeast Side.  

Jim and Bill Campbell outbid Stan Abrams and The Stanley Group on Monday for the property, which sits behind the new Vail Elementary School at 16701 E. Houghton Road.  The new owners plan to build 281 homes on the property, located at the northeast corner of South Houghton Road and Camino del Toro, selling between $140,000 and $200,000.

The future development is in an area where county planners have encouraged "mixed use" growth of homes, apartments and shopping areas. The Campbells grew up in Tucson and ran high-tech businesses on the West Coast before turning to real estate a few years ago. They since have developed housing in San Francisco, where Bill lives, and in Atlanta.

Jim Campbell, 46, stepped down as president and CEO of Ventaso Inc., a San Francisco software firm, and moved back to Tucson after surviving the World Trade Center terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His brother Bill, 52, owned The Application Group, also a San Francisco software firm. He sold the company to Automatic Data Processing Inc. in 1995 and continued to work with the new owners until mid-1999.

The Corona de Tucson project is one of several the brothers are planning, said Jim Campbell, who lives in Tucson. "It has an awesome view of the valley floor," Jim Campbell said of the land that sits at the base of the Santa Rita Mountain foothills. Monday's auction took place in the courtyard of the old Pima County Courthouse, 115 N. Church Ave.

About a dozen people attended, but only Abrams and the Campbells placed bids.

The auction took less than five minutes with Abrams standing down after the Campbells raised the bid to $3 million from $2.81 million. The minimum bid was $2.5 million, or roughly $19,600 per acre. "We are obviously disappointed," said Eric Abrams, vice president of The Abrams Group. The developer sought the property to add it to Santa Rita Ranch, a housing project just east of the state land. Already, about 65 of the 400 homes planned in phase one of Santa Rita Ranch have been sold since it opened in May.

Eventually, it could consist of as many as 1,000 homes on 450 acres, Abrams said.

Monday's auction was the first in the area by the State Land Office since May 2002.

The office then attempted to sell 1,071 acres hugging the northwest corner of South Houghton and West Valencia roads. In that auction, Vistoso Partners, a Tempe developer, outbid Diamond Ventures by bidding $29.1 million - roughly $27,000 an acre - on land that had been appraised at $15.4 million.

That sale has been tied up in court because of the developer's contention that the acreage included commercial parcels. The price Vistoso Partners was willing to pay and the $3 million, or roughly $23,500 per acre, the Campbells have agreed to pay are indicative of the far Southeast Side's growing popularity with developers. That popularity, along with the shrinking inventory of land, has made it harder for smaller developers and builders to compete for development.

"Auctions are probably the wave of the future for buying larger parcels, but you are going to have fewer players," said Jason Wong, a commercial broker who attended Monday's auction. Local appraiser Jim Bradley wasn't surprised at the price paid for the Corona de Tucson land. If five or more homes could be built per acre, the land would be even more valuable - as much as $50,000 per acre, Bradley said. But as it stands, the Campbell brothers are restricted to just 2.2 homes per acre, unless they can successfully amend the Santa Rita Specific Plan.

The Campbells called the open-space restrictions "a good thing," however, given the densely vegetated rolling hills and washes that occupy the land. "We believe in green space," Jim Campbell said.

* Contact reporter Macario Juarez Jr., at 573-4663 or at mjuarez@azstarnet.com.