ASU looks to continue growing its presence in downtown Mesa

By Connor Van Ligten
Mail

Between the MIX Center, Polytechnic Campus, and Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University has a strong presence in Mesa.

And ASU is not close to being finished. The university is looking to expand its footprint in downtown Mesa, or more specifically the Mesa City Center, as part of a 2024 intergovernmental agreement with the city that identified multiple sites within Mesa City Center as potential development spots for future ASU projects and future city center partner locations.

Out of these five potential locations, three of which are for ASU and two are partner locations shared by the university and by the city, the most prominent one is the old post office on 135 N. Center St. It’s early on in the process, but it will be part of ASU’s planned center for creative technology at Mesa City Center, which is built along the Mesa city center on Main Street where the MIX Center and new council chambers reside.

This continued expansion will create more space for ASU buildings and programming, as the school attempts to strengthen its foothold in downtown Mesa and also provide stronger educational opportunities for students.

“We want to rehabilitate or adaptively reuse our creative technology programs,” Rick Naimark, ASU associate vice president of program development planning, said. “It’s not us specifically designing the space, but rather conceptualizing the space for our potential use. It’s a fantastic building, it’s got fantastic bones, and it’s a mid-century building with high floor-to-ceiling heights which lends itself well for these kinds of uses.”

The partnership between the city and ASU will benefit the city by providing an economic driver to create jobs, according to Mesa district 4 council member Jen Duff.

“Downtown Mesa is magnificent, however, we don’t really have an economic driver as far as creating jobs and business corridors in order to maximize what downtown can be economically,” Duff said. “With the expansion of education, we have these great minds coming up with innovative ideas and driving technologies for our future. We have the opportunity through the Mesa Business Builder to provide entrepreneurial and incubation support to build businesses that we don’t even know about.”

Jeff McVay, manager of urban transformation for the city Mesa, said the continued expansion will help more vibrancy into downtown and foster more community activity.

The more space that ASU occupies, the more students, teachers and staff that will be roaming around downtown Mesa.

“There is an economic benefit to the city of having that additional vibrancy,” McVay said. “The students, faculty and staff are supporting our downtown and making it more active by going out for lunch or grabbing a coffee. Them spending dollars down here comes back to the city through sales tax revenues.”

According to Naimark, ASU’s continued expansion will allow the school to expand its film and immersive media programs by building upon resources that are already there.

“There’s a tremendous opportunity to grow those programs in Mesa with more studios, more availability and more diverse kinds of resources,” Naimark said. “This general area of the ASU Center for Creative Technology at Mesa City Center will bring in a lot of students, faculty and staff that weren’t there before.”

It’s going to be a long process. McVay estimated that the city and ASU are about a third of the way to everything being finished. He’s going to present a feasibility concept to the city council in February 2026, which is the next step, but there’s a lot of negotiation between the city and ASU in store for the project going forward.

“These are long journeys. We’re probably one year into a three-year process,” McVay said. “There’s a lot of negotiation that has to happen between ASU and the city before we get to a point where we’re going to the council with an actual project for them to act on.”

Regardless, Duff has high hopes that the project will inject a healthy amount of daily activity into downtown Mesa.

“Right now we’re pretty much all city employees or people who come in during the evening,” Duff said. “We need people who are in our city all day long, not just at the city building or at night. We need that robust activity throughout the day.”

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Connor Van Ligten
Reporter | Fountain Hills/Scottsdale

cvanligten@iniusa.org

After graduating from Arizona State University's Cronkite School in spring 2022, Connor Van Ligten spent a little over year as a reporter for WWL-TV in New Orleans before finding themselves back in Phoenix in October of 2023. Now back in the Valley and writing for the Mesa Independent and the Daily Independent, Connor is ready to tell meaningful stories and report on important civic issues facing Mesa. Connor is a big fan of the 49ers, Warriors, pro wrestling, anime, dogs and fighting video games.