The city of Mesa has been active in its attempts to further spur economic development in corridor and the Mesa-Gateway region as a whole.
“There are two things that attract technology companies, or any company,” said Mesa Economic Development Director Bill Jabjiniak. Those two things include “the amount of available infrastructure” and “how quickly we can get through the entitlement process.”
The corridor, which the city officially named in 2014, has the infrastructure in place to attract technology companies, such as a redundant power system that has close proximity to SRP’s Browning receiving station and 500kV, 230kV and 69kV transmission lines.
Another benefit is access to SRP’s extensive dark, or unused, fiber network. Businesses can pay SRP to tie in to the existing fiber network, which connects with major carrier network access points and data centers in the Phoenix metro area, according to SRP.
Mesa also established the Elliot Road Technology Corridor Planned Area Development Overlay, which reduced entitlement time in the corridor from roughly six months to six weeks. The overlay encompasses areas directly north of Elliot Road from Signal Butte to Hawes Roads.
The Mesa City Council approved the overlay on a 7-0 vote in September 2014.
The corridor already has an anchor in Apple, which chose to maintain a presence in Mesa after its contractor, GT Advanced Technologies, filed for bankruptcy, putting the future of the former First Solar facility it occupied at Ellsworth and Elliot Roads in jeopardy.
The GT Advanced Technologies bankruptcy was a blow for Mesa’s plans but not a fatal one.
“When you lay out a solid game plan and there are hiccups along the way, staying the course for us was easy,” Jabjiniak said.
In 2015, Apple committed to investing $2 billion into the facility to turn it into a command center for its global networks, according to a press release from Gov. Doug Ducey. The commitment provided a much-needed win for the fledgling corridor.
“If you were to establish a tech corridor, who in your wildest dreams would be a better tenant than Apple?” Jabjiniak said.
One reason Apple chose to stay in Mesa following its contractor’s bankruptcy was the ease of doing business with the city, Mesa Development Services Director Christine Zielonka said.
Apple’s presence has been a boon for the city’s efforts to market the corridor as it has shone a spotlight on Mesa and given the city the opportunity to market its amenities to companies around the globe.
While Apple’s commitment bodes well for the area, much of the Elliot Road Technology Corridor still looks more like the Sonoran Desert than the Silicon Desert because it consists of a range of undeveloped plots of dirt.
For the area and the city to fully realize the potential provided by the overlay and the existing infrastructure, it will need several in-development and planned projects to pan out as well.
A nearly complete 94,000-square-foot Dignity Health hospital will anchor El Dorado Holding’s future Elliot 202 mixed-use development on the northeast corner of Loop 202 and Elliot Road.
Several recent announcements also bode well for Mesa, notably DuPont Fabros’ decision to build a data center campus on a 56-acre site at Crismon Road just north of Elliot Road.
The corridor attracted its first high-tech manufacturing tenant recently as well. Niagara Bottling announced it will begin construction this month on a 455,000-square-foot, $76 million bottling plant in the area. The plant will create 45 to 55 jobs and feature highly automated operations.
There are a number of development projects in the planning stages as well.
NKS Group Investments has plans for a roughly 170-acre parceled development on the northwest corner of Loop 202 and Elliot Road. Sunbelt Investment Holdings is developing Mesa Elliot Technology Park, a 203-acre development at the northeast corner Elliot and Ellsworth Roads.
Mesa will also be investing in marketing the corridor by giving it a distinct look and feel. That will include streetscaping projects like widening the road to six lanes and investing in median and monument signage.
Jabjiniak also envisions an influx in retail, services and restaurant development on Elliot Road south of Ellsworth to support the tech and manufacturing businesses coming to the area.
Beyond the infrastructure and ease of doing business in the corridor, the area also boasts more traditional measurables to attract investors.
El Dorado Holdings found the site of its Elliot 202 mixed-used development attractive for several reasons, including its close proximity to freeways, the Eastmark master-planned community, Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and Arizona State University’s Polytechnic Campus, El Dorado Holdings President Jim Kenny said.
Kenny cited a 2006 Urban Land Institute report on the Williams Gateway area that called Ellsworth and Elliot one of the top intersections for commercial development.
The Mesa-Gateway region, long touted by the city and business leaders for its vast economic potential, has struggled to realize that potential due to a variety of factors ranging from real estate speculation to the recession.
That ULI report suggested that the region could support 94,000 jobs in 25 years. It has been 11 years since that report came out and it is unclear how much progress has been made toward that goal, though the area’s largest employer, Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, has roughly 2,500 jobs and supports 10,470 jobs regionally.
In the past, that ULI report, created at the request of East Valley Partnership, bolstered local leaders’ hopes for the region. Only time will tell whether Mesa’s efforts to develop the Elliot Road Technology Corridor will finally help Mesa-Gateway realize that potential.
©2017 East Valley Tribune (Mesa, Ariz.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
