Shopoff Realty Plans $500M Phoenix-Area Industrial Park

The Block on Elliot site. Image courtesy of Shopoff Realty Investments

Shopoff Realty Investments‘ plans for the development of The Block on Elliot in Mesa, Ariz., will soon come before the City Council for consideration, according to Phoenix Business Journal. The industrial park, which will encompass up to 4.1 million square feet at full build-out, carries a price tag of $500 million.

News of the massive industrial project’s status comes after Shopoff Realty’s September 2022 announcement that it had completed the acquisition of a nearly 270-acre site at the intersection of Elliott and Sossaman Roads in unincorporated Maricopa County, with plans of having the property annexed to Mesa.

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Shopoff Realty relied on an $81 million mortgage from Mavik Capital Management to facilitate the $70 million purchase of the former dairy farm. Desert Commercial Advisors had arranged the deal on Shopoff Realty’s behalf, and publicly revealed the project’s name to be The Block on Elliot in October.

“We selected this site as it was one of the largest and best located within the submarket, allowing us to create a high-quality park that would accommodate users’ needs and create a significant number of high-paying jobs,” Bill Shopoff, president & CEO of Shopoff Realty Investments, told Commercial Property Executive. When complete, the project will result in the creation of 6,500 to 10,000 new positions.

The site plan for The Block, as presented in a City of Mesa zoning document, calls for the development of 16 buildings, including 12 industrial facilities, two café buildings and an additional two manufacturing facilities to be reviewed at a later date.

Despite the grand size of the Ware Malcomb-designed park, the buildings will be divisible and able to provide space to a range of tenants. “We plan to accommodate users of various sizes from 50,000 square feet and up,” Shopoff said. The Block will also feature a wealth of open space, landscaping and amenities, including shade canopies and outdoor sitting areas. If Shopoff Realty obtains the requisite approvals, the project will be developed in three phases.

The location has it

Sited within Loop 202 in the Southeast Valley submarket, The Block will boast a location just 3 miles from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, adjacent to Google’s gargantuan data center. The likes of Meta, Apple and EdgeCore Data will also be neighbors in this extension of Mesa’s Elliot Road Technology Corridor.

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A 4 million-square-foot industrial project may seem like a sizeable addition to a market, but demand is robust in the area. The vacancy rate was just 2 percent in Mesa in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a CBRE report, and 3 percent in the Southeast Valley submarket.

“There are 67 tenants looking for a grand total of 8.1 million square feet specifically in the Southeast Valley,” the report indicates. “Throughout 2022, the submarket kept a healthy pace of net absorption and welcomed local and out-of-state business looking for space.”

Across the metropolitan Phoenix industrial market, the cry for space remains loud, even as new deliveries come online. The Valley’s net absorption climbed to 26.5 million square feet in 2022, marking an annual high. And the forecast looks bright for the long term. “The Greater Phoenix market has a number of demand drivers, including the exponential growth in the semiconductor industry in the metro area,” Shopoff noted.