Phoenix has more large-scale development happening at once than most people realize, mixed-use districts, redevelopments, brand-new master-planned communities, all moving at the same time. Each week I pick one worth watching and give you the real version, not the press release version. This week: Legacy Park, the $3 billion project Mesa just approved in the Eastmark area.
On September 14, the Mesa City Council voted unanimously to approve a development agreement for Legacy Park and Gateway Crossing, led by developer Vestar. City officials are calling it the largest private investment in Mesa's history.
Where it actually is
Legacy Park sits on about 200 acres east of Ellsworth Road, between State Route 24 and Williams Field Road, just north of Arizona Athletic Grounds and close to ASU's Polytechnic campus and Mesa Gateway Airport. It's inside the Eastmark community in southeast Mesa, not downtown Mesa, so if you're picturing this near the historic core, it's actually about 15 miles southeast of there.
The GM connection
This land has a history worth knowing. It used to be General Motors' Desert Proving Ground, where GM tested vehicles in extreme heat from 1953 until the company closed it in 2009 and moved testing to Yuma. Everything from early Corvettes to Silverados got run through its paces on this exact ground. The site became part of Eastmark's master-planned community starting in 2013, and Legacy Park is the next phase of what gets built on it.
What's actually planned
At full build-out: roughly 400,000 square feet of retail, restaurants and fitness space, a 600-room luxury resort, a separate 150-room boutique hotel, 3.8 million square feet of office space, 2,261 apartments, and a 20-acre city park built around a public lake. The city also created a theme park district as part of the approval, though no specific theme park has been announced yet. There's a planned pedestrian tunnel under Williams Field Road connecting the development to Arizona Athletic Grounds next door.
The economic pitch, and how the money actually works
The projected numbers are big: an independent analysis pegs the impact at $58.8 billion in economic activity, more than 13,500 jobs, and $1.4 billion in city tax revenue, all over 30 years. Worth knowing how the agreement itself works, though. The developer fronts the cost of public infrastructure first, and gets reimbursed over time out of the tax revenue the project generates, not out of Mesa's existing budget. City officials say that's the mechanism that lets the new tax revenue eventually fund things like parks and public safety citywide, not just around the development itself.
Timeline
Construction isn't expected to start until early 2028, with the first phase opening in October 2029. So if you're picturing that lake filling up next year, it's further out than that.
Legacy Park is being built inside Eastmark, the same master-planned community already sitting on the rest of that old GM site. If you want to see what's actually for sale in the area right now, current Eastmark listings are here.
Nearly two decades after GM packed up and left, this land is getting a second act. Does a $3 billion bet like this actually pay off the way the projections say, or is Mesa growing faster than its infrastructure can keep up with?
