By Scott Shumaker | Mesa Tribune
In 2019, the Mesa City Council approved plans for Gallery Park, a 58-acre mixed-use development with retail, restaurants, hotels, offices and apartments built close together at the southeast corner of Power Road and the Loop 202 Santan.
Developer VIVO Partners’ announcement of the project made headlines in 2018 because the vision was something new in this rapidly growing section of Mesa, just north of Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.
Rather than a conventional shopping center with a few anchors surrounded by drive-thrus, Gallery Park called for a half-million square feet of upscale shopping and entertainment mixed with apartments and hotels – all built close together to create a walkable, urban-style destination.
It would be a “morning to night” destination where locals could go to work and also “have a night on the town,” a Gallery Park brochure boasts.
Encouragingly, the developer, Phoenix-based VIVO Development partners, hired Nelson Partners Architects, a firm that previously worked on projects like Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter.
It promised to debut in 2020, but four years later, the project is less than a quarter complete, with just a handful of retail shops on a 10-acre strip along Power Road.
