On September 15, the Mesa City Council unanimously approved a development agreement for Legacy Park and Gateway Crossing. The vote was not close, and it was not contested. At roughly $3 billion in private investment, this is the largest private project in Mesa history. Moreover, the council paired the agreement with annexation, zoning changes, an infrastructure agreement, and a new theme … Read More
George Oliver Shows Scottsdale How Redevelopment Should Work
A Building That Didn’t Need to Grow Taller George Oliver, a Scottsdale-based real estate firm, bought the office building at 7272 E. Indian School Road for $42.2 million. Paired with two earlier purchases on Scottsdale Road, the assemblage now totals 360,000 square feet. In total, it spans three buildings on six acres. Most Old Town projects chase value by going … Read More
Big Surf Is Becoming a Warehouse. Is That Really Progress?
The Arizona Republic confirmed this week what’s rising on the old Big Surf Waterpark site in Tempe: a 694,000-square-foot industrial park, three buildings ranging from 190,000 to 259,000 square feet, with no tenants named yet. Layton Construction broke ground back in February 2025. The 36-acre site sat vacant for years after Big Surf was demolished in 2021. America’s First Wave … Read More
Toll Brothers Wants to Break a WestWorld Rule Scottsdale Has Kept for More Than a Decade
Scottsdale has a policy nobody had to write down, because everybody who matters understood it: you don’t put more rooftops next to WestWorld. Or next to the big commerce centers. Or next to the airport. It’s the kind of common-sense boundary that keeps a city’s economic engines running without a homeowner calling code enforcement every time a horse show gets … Read More
Top-Selling Blossom Rock Community to Host Two-Day Home Tour Aug. 29-30
32 Model Homes, Eight Leading Builders, New Residential Phases and Future Great Hearts Academy Reinforce Community’s Momentum as One of Arizona’s Best-Selling Master-Planned Communities Homebuyers can soon step inside 32 model homes and experience one of the East Valley’s emerging destinations when Blossom Rock hosts its Escape & Explore Home Tour later this month. The community was recently ranked by … Read More
Amkor Builds Chips, Not Apartments. Axon Should Follow Suit.
By Alexander Lomax A real plant, no strings attached Amkor just landed one of Arizona’s biggest chip deals ever. The Tempe firm secured a $1.5 billion Nvidia prepayment to expand its advanced packaging plant. That facility rises in Peoria, near the TSMC fabs anchoring the state’s chip corridor. It will package the processors powering the AI boom. Amkor is worth billions. It … Read More
How Axon Made Barry Graham a Martyr
By Ronald Sampson Political money sometimes buys outcomes. Other times it manufactures the opposite. The campaign against Barry Graham may end up as a case study in the second category. Axon and its allied committees spent heavily to remove him from the Scottsdale City Council. What they produced instead was his clearest identity in years. Graham was not cruising before the … Read More
Getting to Know Your Candidates: AP&G’s Exclusive Interview with Scottsdale Councilman Barry Graham
We reached out to all Scottsdale City Council candidates with the same questionnaire but with two questions personalized for each candidate at the end. The submissions have been posted in the order they were received back. Do you support the Axon development as originally proposed, including up to 1,900 residential units, or the compromise proposal of around 600 units? If … Read More
Better Together’s Latest Trick: Laundering the Money Trail Through Virginia
A Campaign Finance Report That Answers Nothing Better Together wants Scottsdale voters to believe it has nothing to do with Axon. Its second-quarter campaign finance report shows no ties back to Axon, at least not directly. Every dollar the PAC raised this quarter came from a single source: National Horizon Inc., a self-described conservative super PAC based in Alexandria, Virginia. … Read More
Guest Editorial: Scottsdale Apartments QnA
By Councilwoman Solange Whitehead Protecting Scottsdale’s Character My job is to protect Scottsdale—not to cast meaningless “no” votes for political theater. My record of stopping bad development is unmatched. Just as importantly, I’ve negotiated better projects and helped transform blighted, crime-attracting properties into vibrant destinations. I’ve also changed rules and improved the baseline for development: Adopted building codes that reduce … Read More