568 apartments proposed for Gilbert’s Cooley Station complex Article originally posted on HERE on February 16, 2026 Plans for a new 568-unit apartment complex at Cooley Station were presented this month to the Gilbert Planning Commission. The complex would be located on 20.24 acres on the southwest corner of Williams Field Road and Verde Drive, just west of the Cooley Station’s retail and commercial portion. It is part of the larger master-planned Cooley Station development and considered the village center, according to senior planner Keith Newman. The site is zoned for multi-family medium use within the master plan. The larger community development plan was brought before the Planning Commission over two years ago, according to Newman. The designs for the new Trax at Cooley Station apartment complex were submitted by Pew & Lake, P.L.C, representatives of the Frankel Family Trust developers. According to town documents, the 568 apartments will stretch across 10 buildings, ranging from two to five stories high. The units are further split into 245 one-bedroom units, 218 two-bedroom units and 105 three-bedroom units, with the site having a total density of 22.61 units per acre. Designs for the apartment complex show a main entrance off Williams Field road, with two five-story buildings on either side. The building to the left of the entrance will have a parking garage with 600 spaces for residents. “It’s a very large building, it has about 700 feet of street frontage,” Newman noted. “It’s a five-story building with a parking garage in the center of it, where all the residents will have access to their units internally through the parking garage,” he added. The other, smaller access point to the complex will be off of Somerton Boulevard on the southwest corner of the site. At the center of the site, a two-story clubhouse would be built, and surrounded by four four-story buildings. “Along the eastern perimeter, there are four two-story carriage units that have a garage on the ground floor and apartment units on the second floor,” he said. “And then in the far south corner of the building, right where it comes to a point, are a couple of garage buildings,” he added. In total, the site is expected to have about 1,102 parking spaces, with 44.7% of the land designated for open space. Newman noted the complex exceeds the town’s 40% open space requirement. The plan also shows two outdoor amenity areas, complete with two swimming pools, a children’s play area, a sand volleyball court, tennis court, two pickleball courts, two dog parks, a corn hole area, a bocce ball court and several ramadas. The clubhouse would have a fitness center, clubroom, game room, conference room, two indoor pickleball courts, a basketball half-court, a racquetball court, a yoga room and a lounge with a sauna. “This development actually, for a 568-unit apartment complex, has more amenities than I’ve pretty much ever seen for an apartment complex of this size,” Newman said. Newman said Somerton Boulevard road doesn’t exist currently, and there is a pending town capital improvement project to extend Verde Drive to the east of the site till Williams Field road by building this road. Newman said that town staff had only one point of concern with the designs: Gilbert Fire and Building departments had raised the issue of fire apparatus access. “There’s a lot of parking canopies up close to all of the buildings, even the four-story buildings,” he said. “So, they’re going to have to make some changes to the fire apparatus access where they need one whole side of the building to have access, where they can park a fire truck so they can get on top of the roof of these tall four and five-story buildings,” Newman added. The town planner stated that the developer is aware of this concern and is working to resolve it. Other concerns the town staff had were mainly focused on the buildings’ proposed color schemes. Some buildings in the design were shown to have reddish pink and bright yellow colors, which Newman said wouldn’t gel with the look of the rest of the Cooley Station community. “Those two colors are not colors that we typically see in Coolie Station, especially in the village center area,” he said. “We have made a recommendation to the applicant that they eliminate that color and the yellow color, and use more warm earth tone colors that you see that are found in other places in Coolie Station,” Newman added. But some planning commissioners’ concerns were mainly regarding the number of apartment units that are proposed on the site. “I get asked all the time about the water issue and apartment buildings. Now, we have another 568 units coming into Gilbert,” Commissioner Louis DeGravina said. “Do we do demographic studies to see if these units are full that are already built? What is the flow of people coming into the town of Gilbert?” he asked, adding: “I was just concerned if there’s any kind of studies required by the developer to prove that this is going to be full and it’s adequate for where we need to be now and in the future.” Newman said that the town relies on the developer to do vacancy studies and the town also doesn’t request that information during its planning review applications. “We can in this situation, if that’s something that the commission feels is necessary, but we typically don’t require the applicant to provide us studies on vacancy rates on apartments and whether or not they’re viable or needed in this particular area,” Newman said. Commissioner Raymond Huang was also worried about the number of units proposed, citing the traffic that would be generated from the built-out complex. “That’s a lot of cars coming out and I bet a lot of them will make a left turn to go on the freeway and it looks like there are two access points on Williams Field road, are either one of those going to be signalized?” he asked. Newman said that the staff is currently reviewing a traffic impact study for the project and the surrounding road network. Town Assistant Traffic Engineer Clinton Emery also noted that a signal is proposed at the intersection where Somerton Boulevard will join Williams Field road, rendering a signal at the apartment’s main entrance unnecessary. Vice Chair William Fay pointed out that since the zoning for the site is already multi-family, he had no concerns on that front. “The use is already entitled,” Fay said. Commissioners Lisa Gage and Lesley Davis agreed with town staff about asking the developer to tone down the color schemes for some of the buildings.