Arizona State Land Department to auction off 193 acres in Mesa

Kristena Hansen

Reporter- Phoenix Business Journal

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The Arizona State Land Department will auction off 193.4 acres of State Trust land in east Mesa to the highest bidder Thursday morning, starting at a minimum bid of $30 million, the agency said in a statement late Wednesday afternoon.
The land is located just north of the former GM Proving Grounds at the northeast corner of Signal Butte and Guadalupe roads. That land is in DMB Associates Inc.’s Eastmark master-planned community.
The auction will begin at 10:30 a.m. in the lower level auditorium of the department’s Phoenix office at 1616 W. Adams Street.
“The department is very excited to be auctioning this property, and the fact that this promises to be a competitive auction makes it an even bigger win for the Trust beneficiaries, in this case K-12 education,” Arizona State Land Commissioner Vanessa Hickman, who took over the post after Maria Baier left almost a year ago to become CEO of the Sonoran Institute in Tucson, said in the statement. “Fiscal year 2013 was a good year for the Trust with revenues exceeding $318 million and fiscal year 2014 promises to be even better.”
The Land Department controls roughly 9.2 million acres statewide. On Nov. 19, it plans to hold another auction for 2,365 acres in north Scottsdale at a minimum bid of $21.3 million. The city of Scottsdale is planning to bid on it and add it to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
Based on the minimum bids, the price per acre for the two properties is drastically different.
The Mesa property — which is mostly surrounded by subdivisions, a few K-12 schools and only a few miles away from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport — is being auctioned for a minimum $155,118 per acre.
The Scottsdale land — which is located in a more remote area just south of the Bell Road alignment between 120th and 136th streets — will start at $9,006 per acre.

Kristena Hansen covers residential and commercial real estate.