PHOENIX — At 7th and Garfield streets in downtown Phoenix, there's a building that has balconies, window shades, and lights shining down on the sidewalks.
The building looks like one of the countless apartment complexes that have sprung up around downtown Phoenix over the years, but this one is hiding a secret.
On the front of the building is a large metal sign that says "Evans-Churchill", the name of the neighborhood around Roosevelt Row.
But if you look closely at the building, you notice the doors you thought marked the different apartments...aren't really there. They're indentations in the stucco, painted a slightly different shade of brown.
The windows with slanted metal shades over them, have no glass in them. They're indentations too.
And the balconies under those fake doors on the second story don't have any floors.
Because this apartment building isn't real. It's a facade meant to mask the real purpose.
"That was the whole point," said Kendra Lee.
Lee is the project manager behind the Evans-Churchill building, which is really only just four walls. On the other side is an APS electrical substation.
"We worked extensively with the Evans-Churchill and Roosevelt Row community to come up with something that was going to blend in with the community," Lee said.
The substation was going to have to be tall, Lee said, because the plot of land they were building on was smaller. The equipment needed to be stacked up, which would normally mean a tall, unsightly collection of metal equipment surrounded by a chain-link fence.
Instead, Lee came up with a 22-foot block wall the looked enough like an apartment complex to let people drive right by it without noticing it was even there.
APS is planning two more substations downtown to supply enough power to the downtown area. They will be similarly camouflaged, Lee said, but also more useful, instead of just taking up space.