Why Phoenix belongs on the shortlist
Phoenix is the fifth market most enterprise buyers should price, and for a specific reason. On the three inputs that actually gate a deployment, power cost, land cost, and time to energization, it beats every market ranked above it. What it gives up is interconnection depth, and that only matters for some workloads.
The comparison that decides it is Phoenix against Northern Virginia. Phoenix power runs roughly 40% cheaper per kilowatt hour and its interconnect queue is measured in months rather than years, while its asking rent band sits only about 10% below Northern Virginia. If your requirement does not depend on Ashburn's network density, that gap is the strongest reason in the market to look west.
$0.058 to $0.078
Industrial power per kWh, against $0.095 to $0.13 in Northern Virginia.
8 to 14 months
Typical interconnect outlook, against four to six years in Northern Virginia.
$200K to $500K
Per acre for land near substations and fiber, against $3.5M to $4.0M per acre in Northern Virginia.
$170 to $210
Asking rent per kW per month, roughly flat year over year.
Figures are the published market values carried on our pricing benchmarks page, where each one is attributed and dated. One conflict is worth knowing: Phoenix has been published as both a $170 to $210 band and a $190 average in different periods. We cite the band and flag the discrepancy rather than resolving it silently. Land and power figures vary by parcel and by substation.
What we are tracking in Maricopa County right now
Market research tells you the shape of a metro. It does not tell you which buildings are going up. We collect Mesa and Goodyear permit and site-plan filings directly, and the current picture is concentrated enough to be useful.
What has been announced in Phoenix and Mesa
Announcements are not filings. Nobody has to build what they announce, the figure is the one the developer chose to publish, and the date moves. They are here because megawatts are what a requirement is measured in, and because the size of what is coming changes who will take your call. Every figure below was read on the page it links to.
| Capacity | Operator | Project | What was announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 360 MW | Pacific Proving | Pacific Proving Technology Park, Mesa | 178 acres, six buildings, 32 data halls |
| 240 MW | NTT Global Data Centers | Mesa campus | Part of a wider master plan on the same ground |
| 20 MW | 5C Data Centers | Phoenix facility | The smallest announced project we track here, and the closest to enterprise scale |
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and each figure links to the report it came from. It is kept apart from the permit record above and never added to it: one is a document a jurisdiction issued, the other is a plan a company published. Neither is availability.
Every Phoenix and Mesa facility we track
171 data centers across Phoenix and Mesa, from the facility database we hold as a Bridgepointe partner. It is the layer that says whether a building exists yet, which no permit record answers directly.
| Status | Facilities | What it means for a search |
|---|---|---|
| Operational | 66 | Standing and running. The only layer that can hold a requirement this year |
| Under construction | 21 | Steel is up. Reachable for a date 6 to 18 months out, and usually pre-leasing now |
| Planned | 83 | Announced or entitled, not yet built. Treat every date on these as a forecast |
| Building area on file | 29,589,173 SF | Across the 75 facilities where a size is recorded, of 171 |
| Largest single building | 2,640,000 SF | CyrusOne, Mesa |
Operators with the most facilities here: QTS (30), EdgeCore (15), NTT Global Data Centers (14), CyrusOne (13), Aligned Data Centers (11), Compass Datacenters (9), STACK Infrastructure (8), Stream Data Centers (7), Menlo Digital (5), Novva (5).
Where they cluster: Phoenix (37), Mesa (36), Avondale (17), Glendale (17), Goodyear (17), Chandler (16).
The largest buildings coming to this market
104 facilities here are under construction or planned. These are the ten largest by floor area, and a size on file is not a promise of a delivery date.
| Operator | Status | Building size | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| CyrusOne | Planned | 2,640,000 SF | Mesa, AZ |
| Prime Data Centers | Under Construction | 1,302,000 SF | Avondale, AZ |
| Crusoe | Planned | 800,500 SF | Tonopah, AZ |
| Crusoe | Planned | 800,500 SF | Tonopah, AZ |
| Crusoe | Planned | 800,500 SF | Tonopah, AZ |
| EdgeCore | Planned | 618,480 SF | Mesa, AZ |
| EdgeCore | Planned | 618,480 SF | Mesa, AZ |
| RadiusDC | Planned | 530,000 SF | Phoenix, AZ |
| Vantage Data Centers | Under Construction | 451,600 SF | Goodyear, AZ |
| NTT Global Data Centers | Planned | 242,637 SF | Mesa, AZ |
From the Signal facility database, which we hold as a Bridgepointe partner rather than as a public record, so these rows carry no filing link and street addresses are held back. A building existing is not the same as space being available in it: every facility above may be full, pre-leased, or closed to your size. Finding out is a call, not a lookup. See how we verify capacity.
City of Mesa building permits, the most descriptive building layer we collect anywhere. Every figure below is a count of filings we collected ourselves, and every row links to the record it came from.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Filings we track | 98 | Deduplicated. One source, November 2007 to July 2026 |
| Filed in the last 12 months | 21 | The live rate of construction activity, which is the number that moves |
| Tenant fit-out filings | 45 | A customer is landing in a named building. The strongest signal in the set |
| New building filings | 13 | Shell and site work, which is capacity two years out, not now |
| Distinct addresses | 23 | Separate sites in the record, not separate buildings |
| Largest capacity in the record | 308 MW | Stated on 5 of 98 filings. Capacity is rarely published, so this is a floor, not a market total |
| Largest floor area filed | 868,431 SF | One permit, not a campus total. Floor area is published far more often than capacity |
| Operators we can name | 7 | 52 of 98 filings name a recognizable operator. The rest name an engineer, a builder or a holding company |
| Filings with no date published | 2 | The source publishes the facility, not the filing date |
Operators appearing by name: EdgeCore (21), NTT (16), Apple (6), Vantage Data Centers (4), CyrusOne (3), Compass Datacenters (1), EdgeConneX (1).
The filings that state a capacity
Most permits never mention megawatts. These do, and the basis matters: a figure the applicant stated for the project is a different claim from a generator nameplate, which is backup plant rather than sellable load.
| Capacity | Basis | The filing |
|---|---|---|
| 308 MW | Generator nameplate, summed from stated ratings | NTT Global Data Centers Americas is adding an additional Data Center building in Mesa, Arizona as part of a 244 MW master planned... |
| 80 MW | Capacity stated in the filing | ...* * * *Dynalectric - East Mesa 80 MW Data Center* * * * * * |
| 12 MW | Capacity stated in the filing | ...type I-B construction, 40,964 SF. Scope includes fit out of 12 MW data hall space with racks and associated electrical, Defer |
| 8 MW | Capacity stated in the filing | ...Tenant improvement include technology and electrical fitout of (3) 8 MW data halls and tenant office and storage spaces. Speci... |
| 6 MW | Capacity stated in the filing | ...B, S-1 and S-2 occupancy. Modification scope includes fit out of 6 MW data hall space with racks and associated electrical. Sp... |
The most recent filings on the record
Collected from City of Mesa open permit data. A permit proves that construction is happening. It does not prove that space is available, and no public filing anywhere discloses what is contractible at a named building. That answer comes from an operator call, which is the part we do by hand. See how we verify capacity.
The Elliot Road corridor is the market
Almost everything active in Phoenix right now sits along a few streets in southeast Mesa. Elliot Road, Ellsworth Road, Pecos Road, Hawes Road and Everton Terrace carry the great majority of the filings we track, and the operators repeat.
NTT, Elliot Road
A 244 MW master planned site. The PH6 building was filed in July 2026, following a 188,093 SF building in May 2026 and earlier PH3 and PH5 phases.
EdgeCore, Everton Terrace
The most frequent filer in our record at 22 filings. Recent work is tenant fitout inside the existing PH02 building, including a 12 MW data hall buildout.
Elliot Road, Phase 3
New ground-up halls of 285,282 SF and 284,497 SF filed across December 2025 and January 2026, on a 185.6 acre site plan.
CyrusOne, 96th Street
A 243,332 SF two-story shell filed July 2025 with data hall buildout following in December.
Apple, Vantage and several projects filed only under codes such as PHX062 and PHX065 also appear. Coded filings are normal here and usually mean a hyperscale tenant that has not been named yet. Three separate site plan reviews were filed in August 2025 covering 185.6, 199.2 and 170.0 acres, which is the clearest signal in the data that the corridor is not finished expanding.
A shell permit means a building. A tenant improvement permit naming specific data halls and megawatts means that building is being committed to someone. When fitout filings on a campus outnumber shell filings, the campus is leasing faster than it is being built, and the sales conversation there will be short.
What the megawatt numbers actually mean
The largest capacity figure in our Phoenix record is 308 MW, and it would be a mistake to read that as available capacity. It is a generator nameplate total drawn from an air permit, covering three units. Generator nameplate is backup capacity, sized above IT load, and it is the number most often quoted back to buyers as if it were the size of the facility.
The same filing describes the site as a 244 MW master planned development. That is the planned figure. Neither number tells you what can be contracted, on what date, at what density. Only an operator can answer that, and they answer it against a specific requirement.
Generator nameplate is what the backup plant can carry. Master plan capacity is what the site could eventually hold. Contractible IT load is what you can sign for. Providers are not always careful about which one they are quoting, and the gap between them can be a factor of two.
Why Phoenix wins deals
- Power cost: among the cheapest of any major U.S. market, and the reason large requirements keep landing in Mesa.
- Speed to energization: an eight to 14 month interconnect outlook is a different planning universe from a four to six year queue.
- Land economics: parcels near substations and fiber trade at a small fraction of Northern Virginia pricing, which keeps campus expansion viable.
- Rate stability: asking rents have been roughly flat, against double-digit growth in Chicago.
- Room to grow: the site plans filed in 2025 alone cover more than 550 acres, so a phased requirement has somewhere to go.
- Climate engineering is solved: desert heat is a design input operators here have handled for a decade, not an open risk. Ask how it affects your PUE and your power bill, not whether it works.
What Phoenix does not offer is carrier and cloud on-ramp choice on the scale of Ashburn, and its water position is a live public issue that shapes local approvals. Neither is a reason to skip the market. Both are reasons to ask specific questions.
Where Phoenix is the wrong answer
Phoenix is a weak fit when the workload needs the widest possible peering ecosystem, when East Coast or European latency governs the design, or when a compliance regime pins you to a named region. It is also the wrong market if you need capacity inside 90 days and are not willing to look at second-generation space, because the current build is committed well ahead of delivery.
For central U.S. placement, compare it against Dallas-Fort Worth, which has similar power economics and more carrier depth. For interconnection, compare it against Northern Virginia and decide whether the premium buys something your application uses.
What to ask a Phoenix operator
- Is the power for my phase energized today, in construction, or in the utility queue?
- Which specific substation serves the building, and what is its remaining headroom?
- Is the megawatt figure in the proposal IT load, generator nameplate, or master plan capacity?
- How much of this phase is already preleased, and is my block contiguous?
- What is the water usage design, and how is that cost passed through?
- What carriers are on net today, and what is the cross-connect cost to reach a cloud on-ramp?
What to watch next
Two things will decide whether Phoenix stays cheap. The first is whether the interconnect queue holds at under a year as more load arrives, because the queue is the single largest part of the advantage. The second is local approval politics around water and large-load tariffs, which is where an eight month timeline quietly becomes a two year one. Neither is visible in a rate card. Both show up in permit and site-plan filings months before they show up in a quote, which is why we watch the filings rather than the press releases.