AWS Mesa Elliot Road data center, Mesa, Arizona

Mesa's Planning and Zoning Board approved the site plan for Amazon Web Services' AWS Mesa Elliot Road, two buildings totaling 458,608 square feet on 42.9 acres south of Elliot Road and west of Signal Butte Road in the Eastmark community of Mesa, Maricopa County, Arizona, at its March 26, 2025 meeting. The site sits next door to Apple's Mesa data center. The 4-0-1 vote cleared the way for construction despite opposition from Eastmark's master developer.

The board also approved a special use permit cutting parking to 152 spaces from the 512 normally required, and a 6,933-square-foot security building near the Elliot Road entrance. The fight was over who reviews the design: the board dropped a requirement for final approval from the Eastmark Design Review Committee before any building permit, leaving only the city's own review. "There's a regulatory requirement for this process," said Susan Demmitt, a lawyer for master developer DMB Mesa Proving Grounds, calling it a break from 14 years of precedent.

Gary Hayes of Ryan Companies, the developer, said Brookfield Residential had rejected its revised design submittal after giving conditional approval: "We can't get building permits because they rejected our submittal after they gave us a conditional approval." Amazon bought the land in December 2021 for $16.9 million; it had earlier been planned for an Amazon logistics facility.

Arizona's mood on data centers has shifted since. On August 31, 2026, Attorney General Kris Mayes asked the legislature and Gov. Katie Hobbs to stop approving new data centers, saying "the only sane thing to do is to pause the approval of new data centers." With the site plan approved, the next step is building permits from the City of Mesa; no construction start had been reported as of the most recent coverage, in April 2025.