Photo via OpenStreetMap
By Justin Mathews | Pinal Post
The San Tan Valley Town Council approved a letter supporting Gilbert’s 2026 Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant application without opposition. The grant would fund a study — not construction — to determine whether the fragmented Hunt Highway corridor can be connected into a continuous east-west route.
Town Manager Brent Billingsley described the route’s challenges during the council’s Feb. 4, 2026, meeting. “If you try to drive Hunt Highway north and west, it kind of becomes a problem because you get to Queen Creek and Hunt Highway ends,” he said. “And then in Gilbert, it picks back up again and then it ends again, and then it’s a two-lane road through Chandler up to 287.”
Gilbert’s intent, Billingsley explained, is to study the corridor. The goal is to determine whether it can become a more regional east-west connector on the east side of the Valley.
