What it’s actually like
Fifth Avenue sells a great deal of jewelry. GemTime is where some of it goes to be fixed. The shop is a small room in Suite A at 7111 East Fifth Avenue, the same building as Citizen Public House, and its center of gravity is two workbenches placed side by side. At one sits George Danayan, who handles jewelry. At the other sits his brother John Danayan, who handles watches. When a piece comes in, it goes to the right bench, and often you can watch the work happen.
The range is wide on purpose. On the watch side, GemTime works on everything from a drugstore Timex that needs a battery to a vintage Rolex that needs a proper service, and recent customers describe both: a quick job done in under ten minutes, and vintage Rolex repairs handled by staff they call knowledgeable and friendly. On the jewelry side, the work is replacing missing stones, resizing rings, reworking a family heirloom into something wearable, and making new pieces from scratch, including engagement and wedding rings.
This is a trade shop more than a showroom, and it is family in a literal sense. The Danayans are the fourth generation in the business, and the brothers carry themselves the way people do when they learned at a parent’s bench. They also buy old jewelry and watches, which makes the shop the sensible place to bring a box of inherited pieces when you are not yet sure what to repair, what to remake and what to sell.
What to buy
A repair, not a purchase. The best reason to visit is the piece already in your drawer: the watch that stopped, the ring that no longer fits, the earring missing a stone.
A custom ring. For an engagement or a wedding, a ring made by the person at the bench rather than ordered from a catalog.
A vintage watch service. The specialty that earns the shop its reviews, and the one to book ahead for if your watch is older than you are.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
GemTime is in the 7111 building on the Fifth Avenue shops curve west of Scottsdale Road, with Luv Luxe in Suite C and Citizen Public House in Suite E. Street spaces on Fifth go to regulars; use the free public garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal or the Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard and walk. The Old Town on foot note maps the loop and the Downtown & 5th Ave guide covers the district.
Plan around the job. Batteries, straps and simple sizing are often same-visit work, so drop the piece and walk the avenue. A full mechanical service or a heirloom remake takes longer and usually means a second trip, so visitors should bring the piece early in their stay rather than on the last afternoon.
Bring the paperwork. For a luxury watch, any service records or original papers help, and for a piece you want to sell, bring ID, which shops that buy gold and watches commonly ask for.
If you are buying Native silver elsewhere on the street, the buying Native American art note is the guide to what you are looking at; GemTime is where a cuff that needs sizing or a stone that has worked loose can be looked at afterward.
Eat while you’re there
Citizen Public House is in the same building, which makes a drop-off-and-lunch plan easy. Cartel Roasting Co. is a few doors along for coffee while a battery goes in, Berdena’s is the closet-sized coffee bar further along Fifth, and FnB in Craftsman Court is the dinner booking.
How it got here
Fifth Avenue’s first identity was the bench. When fire destroyed the Arizona Craft Center early in the 1950s, the silversmiths, jewelers and other makers who had worked there resettled along Fifth Avenue and Main Street, and in 1955 Craftsman Court was built for them. For decades the avenue was a place where jewelry was made and mended as well as sold, and some of the dealers on the street, like Sewell’s Indian Arts, still talk about the makers behind each piece.
The Danayan family’s route to that tradition ran the long way around. The brothers’ grandfather and father fled Lebanon during the civil war and settled in Toronto, where their father went to work as a watchmaker. The business grew from there into an eight-person watch facility in Michigan, and the next generation, George and John, brought it to Arizona. By the time a Phoenix television profile visited in 2023, GemTime had been in business for more than twenty-five years and the family trade was in its fourth generation.
The shop’s Fifth Avenue address puts it in good company. The 7111 building also holds Citizen Public House, one of the restaurants that made the avenue a dinner destination in the 2010s, and Luv Luxe, the luxury handbag resale shop. Between them the three suites are a fair cross-section of the street today: a kitchen, a luxury boutique and a repair bench.
The repair bench is the oldest of those ideas. Fifth Avenue was laid out for people who worked with their hands in the front of the shop, and a watchmaker and a jeweler working side by side in Suite A, fixing what the rest of the street sells, is the most direct link the avenue has left to the craftspeople who gave it its start.