T.The new owners of former dairy farms on Elliott Road and Sossaman Road are moving full speed ahead to transform the 273-acre ranch into an industrial park with specifications to attract Mesa’s next industrial megaproject.

Shopoff Realty Investments paid $80 million for a parcel of unincorporated land in Maricopa County in September.

The sale marks the final sale of their land holdings in the Mesa area by the Morrison family, who have farmed in the area since World War II.

Half of the dairy farm and herd completed their move to Girabend last year.

Now that the cows are gone, Shopoff is wasting no time developing the site.

The company simultaneously submitted to the city an annexation request, a rezoning application, and a site plan review for a large industrial park that Shopoff dubbed “The Block.”

The company is now working out details of a development agreement with city officials to be submitted to the city council along with other requests.

Last week, the Mesa Planning and Zoning Commission approved rezoning and plans for the first two phases of the block, which will require 14 buildings representing a total of 2 million square feet of industrial space.

City planners told the board that there are currently not many restaurants or shops nearby in the area, so the plan will also include two cafe/club buildings that will serve as amenities for workers on campus. It is said that

2 million square feet represents the north side of the site. Phase 3 on the south side leaves room for his two giant build-to-suits, larger than any other building on campus.

Shopoff attorney Sean Lake said the third phase could be shaped to meet the needs of future users.

According to Lake, the developer has ambitions to attract high-profile industrial users.

“There are very few parcels of land like this left in the Valley,” says Lake. Block “can accommodate some tenants that others cannot.”

He said one class of future users might be manufacturers supplying materials to Arizona’s growing semiconductor industry.

For example, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is currently building a $40 billion semiconductor factory on its 1,000 Ace site in North Phoenix. The facility is scheduled to be completed in 2024.

Mesa already has several semiconductor suppliers or related industries, and city planners will welcome an area still dominated by agriculture at the intersection of Elliott Road and Sosaman Road within Loop 202.

In September, Mesa’s director of economic development, Bill Jabjiniak, told the Tribune that the city envisions tech and manufacturing jobs at the former dairy plant.

“With the success of the formal portion of the Elliott Road Technology Corridor, it makes some sense to have Google in the northwest corner to continue the technology theme and focus across Elliott Road,” Jabzi said. Niack said.

The city is engaged in an ongoing campaign to limit the amount of industrial land on Mesa used for warehouses to store and sort goods for transportation.

Warehouses are seen as adding truck traffic to local roads without creating jobs above average wage levels in the area.

City leaders want industrial tenants to build or design products in Mesa, not warehouses.

A development agreement currently being negotiated between the city and Shopoff could be intended to assure the city that The Block will not become a 300-acre warehouse.

“The city wants jobs, jobs, manufacturing, and that’s what we’re working on,” Lake said.

Lake declined to elaborate further on the terms of The Block’s current development agreement, but said at the board meeting that the agreement includes “specific uses and various types of permitted and prohibited said that there is something

Last month, the city council approved plans to turn a 50-acre industrial park next to AT Still University into a 50-acre industrial park, conditional on approval of a development agreement with applicants that limits warehouses to no more than 49% of the building’s square feet. I was doing it.

In its project description, Shopoff says The Block will only house warehousing and distribution as a “secondary” activity. It is mainly intended for developments that host manufacturing industries.

But the Shopoff team seems to think the block holds good promise for attracting what the city wants, even without restrictions.

The industrial property market remains strong, as reported in the project description, and Shopoff is bullish about its prospects of attracting a “state-owned enterprise” to The Block.

Citing data from commercial real estate firm CBRE, Shopoff said the Mesa Gateway area will have an industrial vacancy rate of 4.2% in 2022.

The story claims that CBRE has already identified “aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor groups, chip makers, and clean-tech companies seeking to locate in general areas within a certain radius of the project site.”