This week's projects
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Dutch Bros Coffee, Southern & McClintock
1,060 sq ft, 0.96 acres
The vacant bank comes down and a 1,060 sq ft drive-through coffee shop goes up on 0.96 acres, with 19 parking spaces.
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Revelry (new mixed-use)
533 units, $143.7M permit value
New mixed-use residential and commercial building with 533 units and 847,130 sf, permitted Aug 7 at $143.7M. The site permits followed Sep 2: paving to Sunland Asphalt, and water, sewer, fire line and street lights to X Contracting.
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Emerald Center Mixed-Use (The Dewitt Apartments)
460,284 sq ft, 376 units, 12.16 acres
Five four-story apartment buildings with 376 units, four detached garages, a pool, spa, gym and dog park, and shade canopies over the parking.
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Panattoni Buildings 1 and 2 at Fountainhead Corporate Park
$30.8M permit value
Two new industrial buildings of 248,640 sf and 196,191 sf, permitted Aug 6 at $17.1M and $13.8M, each with a 2-inch domestic water meter and a 1.5-inch landscape meter.
Get these every Friday, free
One short email a week: the commercial jobs coming up in Tempe, AZ, what they are, and roughly when they go out to price. No card, no account, and you can leave with one click. Subscribers get the rest: who to call, the documents behind every fact, and the bid window.
How a commercial project moves through Tempe
Most commercial jobs pass through several public steps before anyone is hired to build them. Each step leaves records, and each one is a chance to hear about the job before the bid list is set.
Development Review Commission
Hears site plans, building design, use permits and plats in public, and recommends rezonings and planned developments to City Council. Its staff reports come with the site plan, the landscape plan and the design team, often months before a building permit.
Hearing Officer and Board of Adjustment
Handle smaller requests such as use permits and variances. Small on paper, but they often mark a building being reused or expanded.
City Council
Makes the final call on rezonings, planned developments and development agreements, and awards the city's own contracts.
Building permits
The last public step before work starts. Right-of-way permits for paving, water, sewer and street lights follow, and those name the subcontractors already hired, so the earlier hearings are where the time is.
Where the public records are
Everything on this page comes from records anyone can read. If you want to follow them yourself, start here:
- City of Tempe meeting agendas (staff reports, exhibits, minutes)
- City of Tempe open data (building permits)
- Maricopa County Assessor parcel map
Questions people ask
How can I find out about commercial projects in Tempe before they go out to bid?
Most commercial projects in Tempe go before the Development Review Commission before anyone is hired to build them. The staff report and exhibits attached to that agenda name the developer, the architect and the civil engineer, with a site plan and a landscape plan. Reading them every week is how you hear about a job months before the bid list is set. Groundwork does that reading and writes down who to call.
Where are Tempe's planning agendas and permits published?
Agendas, staff reports, exhibits and minutes are on the City of Tempe's Agenda Online site, and building permits are in the city's open data. Both are free to anyone. The work is in reading them every week and telling apart the projects that will need your trade from code amendments and paperwork.
Does an approval by the Development Review Commission mean the job is happening?
It is a strong sign. Design approvals are often final at the Commission, while rezonings still need City Council. A project usually becomes real when building permits follow. This page lists projects that have cleared a public step, and says which step that was.
Is all of this public information?
Yes. Everything here comes from records anyone can read, and the links above show where they are. What Groundwork adds is the weekly reading, the judgment about which jobs fit your trade, and the contacts gathered in one place.
Get the full list every week
Each Friday, subscribers get a short report on every job in Tempe that's close to being priced: the team to call, the timing, and where each fact came from. Two weeks free, no card. See plans and start a trial or open a sample issue.
Also covered: Mesa, AZ, Phoenix, AZ.
Leads by trade: every trade we cover.