Pits To Property

Reclaimed Land Developed Into Business Parks

Reclaiming land after mining takes meticulous planning and care to do it right.

At its 24th Street facility in Phoenix, Vulcan’s plan to transform its 315-acre site into a business park will take more than two decades to complete.

In accomplishing a productive end use for the facility centrally located near Sky Harbor Airport, Vulcan established four phases for the former quarry land that was filled and sold beginning in the mid-2000s to become the Sky Harbor Business Park.

“We compact the soil and make sure geotechnically it’s sound and then we’ll partner with a major developer,” said Mike Linton, VP Property & Land Development at Vulcan. “They will build the buildings, create the jobs and create the opportunities as this area redevelops as the center core of the city.”

“This location is fantastic in the valley,” said Developer Mike Forst of Sun State Builders, which built infrastructure to attract industrial tenants. “We’re close to the airport. There just aren’t many sites that you can develop industrial in this area anymore.”

The development was purchased in 2011 by the Wentworth Property Company, which created a multi-phase development that resulted in more of a diverse tenant base..

“The tenants here are everywhere from DHL, to Amazon, to Western Windows,” said Tim Chester, Principal, Wentworth Property Company. “Manufacturers, distributors and some corporate offices, believe it or not. We’ve had an enormous amount of positive feedback from not only just city council, neighborhood committees.”

“Vulcan also has done a really good job of having the vision of being able to take properties and wanting to take properties that are previously mined and put them back into production and develop again what’s become really a very beautiful, nice business park,” said John Werstler, Industrial Commercial Broker at CBRE.

The vision continues currently with Phase 3 with an additional 55 acres that Vulcan should have on the market by 2025.

Left: Materials from constructions sites are dumped into the 24th Street facility to help fill the area. Right: A PID meter (Photoionization detector) is used to ensure the materials that come into the site are clean and safe.

The final phase of the reclamation effort involves a 120-acre site south of the Salt River, which Vulcan will likely begin filling within the next decade and return it for another use that will benefit the community.

“Not only do we mine it but then we again are able to do things like what we have here, this fill project and make the land useful again,” said Vulcan Landfill Manager Dan Zeller.