A 178-Acre Data Center Campus Proposed in Mesa. What To Know

Article originally posted on AZ Central on March 8, 2024

Developers proposed a 178-acre data center hub with 11 buildings in southeast Mesa along Pecos and Crismon roads.

The property owner Pacific Proving LLC submitted the preliminary paperwork to the city on Monday to develop the area as a data center and technology employment campus.

Data center announcements for the city and metro Phoenix have become the new norm as a new study found the area to be the biggest hub in the western U.S. and the second nationally for this type of development.

The facilities house servers, networking equipment and other apparatus and are often criticized for their lack of job opportunities and water use to keep the building cool.

Conceptual renderings of the main building of a 178-acre proposed data center hub dubbed the Pacific Proving Technology Campus in southeast Mesa.

About 140 acres of the Pacific Proving Technology Campus will need to be annexed into the city to receive city utility services and be rezoned to light industrial. Mesa had earmarked the area for mixed-use community development not employment in its long-term planning documents.

Pacific Proving’s application states its project will encourage additional growth in technological users and business because of its proximity to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and the city’s Pecos Advanced Manufacturing Zone.

Site plans of a 178-acre proposed data center hub dubbed the Pacific Proving Technology Campus in southeast Mesa.

The campus plans to include:

  • A three-story office building of approximately 150,000 square feet for office and employment space.
  • A one-story, approximately 95,000 square foot warehouse building.
  • Nine one-story data hall spec buildings of approximately 2.3 million square feet for future employment users.

The developers will install a closed loop water cooling system that is filled once to enhance efficiency, the application states. The system is “entirely self-contained and does not employ any evaporative cooling methods that would result in evaporative or condensation loss,” the application reads.

The proposed project is situated just east of Arizona Athletic Grounds, formally known as Legacy Park. Pacific Proving is also the youth sports facility’s landlord and is a major developer in the area.

Other Mesa-based data centers in the pipeline

Data center development in southeast Mesa has ramped up over the years by big-named tech companies.

In September, Google broke ground on a new $600 million data center that company executives said would not use water-based cooling and instead would be air-cooled.

BACK TO TOP FIVE