5 Fast Risers Make a Big Splash in the Desert
Looking for the next great American boomtown? By various metrics, these five communities outpace the rest of the country in economic growth, industrial development, population growth and/or investment project activity.
North Las Vegas, Nevada
No place in the Desert Southwest booms more than North Las Vegas, a city of 300,000 people 8 miles from the Las Vegas Strip. According to Commercial Search’s mid-year industrial report, the Las Vegas Valley is the seventh-fastest-growing industrial market in the nation and home to the third- and fifth-largest industrial projects completed in the U.S. during the first half of the year: the North Las Vegas Logistics Center, at just over 2 million sq. ft., and Vantage North, a 1.7 million-sq.-ft. development.
Since 2013, the population of North Las Vegas has increased by 25% while its number of businesses has grown by 35%. Today, the city is home to 7.2 million sq. ft. of retail space and 68 million sq. ft. of industrial space. An additional 24 million sq. ft. of industrial development is planned.
Greg Bortolin, director of communications for the City of North Las Vegas, says that “we are uniquely positioned in the West. You can reach Denver from here in a day. Also, the city makes it easy for businesses to get in, build and open. The city has invested its own money into infrastructure and sites.”
The master-planned industrial park known as Apex drives most of this activity. It is an 18,000-acre project with 5,000 remaining developable acres. Completed investments in the park include a 15-acre project by Air Liquide; Dermody (39 acres); Kroger (90 acres); Northpoint (127 acres); Operating Engineers (99 acres); and VanTrust (300 acres).
Additional projects under construction include sites for Moonwater, EBS, CapRock, Prologis, Apollo, Hopewell and others. Roughly 5.5 million sq. ft. of projects are completed in Apex. Another 3.8 million sq. ft. are under construction.
“We have almost doubled in size in the last 10 years. We think we will continue to be one of the fastest-growing cities for years to come.”
— Suzanne Boyles, Economic Development Director, City of Buckeye, Arizona
David Brown, president of Land Development Associates, says the first two years of Apex saw 1,000 acres absorbed by development. “It has to do with the lack of pure industrial space in Southern Nevada,” he says. “A developer was willing to take the risk.”
Brown says the next big boom in Apex will be from data centers. “There is a lack of power throughout the country,” he says. “Nevada will become the leader in data centers and AI. We have available sites.”
He calls Apex “the perfect storm for industrial developers, end-users and distribution facilities,” he says. “The municipality is the most developer-friendly city I have worked in.”
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Matched taxable gross receipts (MTGR) increased in New Mexico by $25 billion, representing a year-over-year change of 5%, the second-highest level ever reported, according to the New Mexico Economic Development Department. This economic growth was largely concentrated in and around Albuquerque and its two main counties: Sandoval and Bernalillo.
Mark Roper, executive director of the New Mexico Department of Economic Development, says that renewable energy projects in Mesa del Sol, a master-planned mixed-use development in southeast Albuquerque, are fueling much of this growth.
“New Mexico has embraced renewable energy development as a key sector,” says Roper. “We are transitioning from oil and gas into alternative sectors.”
Two notable new investors in Albuquerque are Ebon Solar and Kairos Power. Ebon announced on August 7 that it selected a site in Mesa del Sol for a $942 million facility investment that will create over 900 jobs. A Delaware-based solar cell manufacturing company, Ebon will build an 834,000-sq.-ft. plant to make solar cells in New Mexico’s largest metropolitan area. “New Mexico offers abundant solar resources, favorable renewable energy policies and a dedicated, skilled workforce,” said Ebon Solar CEO Judy Cai.
Kairos Power announced September 16 that it will invest $270 million to build a salt production plant and two fuel development lab facilities that support advanced nuclear reactor technology at the company’s Albuquerque campus. The project will create 100 jobs and add an estimated $478 million to the New Mexico economy over the next 10 years.
“The infrastructure and capabilities we are investing in here are critically important to our long-term commercial strategy and will enable the delivery of a safe, reliable and affordable technology, starting with the Hermes demonstration reactor,” said Mike Laufer, CEO and co-founder of Kairos.
Buckeye, Arizona
Greater Phoenix suburb Buckeye is no stranger to boom times. In 2022, Buckeye was recognized as the fourth-fastest-growing city in America — just three years after it was named the No. 1 fastest-growing city in the country by the Census Bureau. Today, Buckeye has just over 119,000 people and is making room for more.
“We have almost doubled in size in the last 10 years,” says Suzanne Boyles, economic development director for the City of Buckeye. “We think we will continue to be one of the fastest-growing cities for years to come.”
Buckeye has seen about 10 million sq. ft. of new commercial development over the last four years, primarily in advanced manufacturing, logistics, retail and health care. Now it is poised to land more. Denver-based Tract recently purchased the Buckeye Technology Corridor, a 2,100-acre site that the firm plans to use to build an advanced AI data center.
Tract paid $136 million for the land, on which it plans to build one of the nation’s largest data center campuses over the next 15 years. Tract estimates that the property could support $20 billion worth of data center projects on site.
“Another company is looking at a potential data center site of 300 acres in Buckeye,” says Boyles. “We have a very good partnership with Arizona Public Service [the electric utility company for Buckeye]. Those data center developers are talking with APS very early on.”
Mesa, Arizona
Speaking of data centers, the City of Mesa in Greater Phoenix landed a juggernaut of its own: Novva Data Centers announced September 4 that it will build a $3 billion, 300-MW campus on 160 acres outside the 202 loop. The project will total 1.3 million sq. ft.
The first 96 MW of data center capacity will launch in late 2026, but that is not the only growth occurring in Mesa, a city of 514,000 people in Maricopa County. “In fiscal year 2024, we’ve seen over 7 million square feet built or absorbed and over $5 billion in capital investment in Mesa,” says Jaye O’Donnell, economic development director for the city. “Novva was one of 66 projects we worked on this past fiscal year. We are known for data centers. We have Meta, Google, Apple’s Global Command Center, EdgeCore, EdgeConneX, Novva, etc. And we have several more coming online.”
O’Donnell adds that aerospace, aviation and defense firms are expanding in Mesa as well. “The bulk of projects occurred because we have product,” she says. “Five or six years ago, we did not have much industrial space. We started to court developers and work with them to increase our industrial space in Mesa.”
It worked. Recently, Mesa landed large facility investment deals from Magna, a global automotive manufacturing company, and semiconductor firm Komico. As O’Donnell says, “Product wins projects.”
Tucson, Arizona
About 120 miles south of Mesa is Tucson, a city of 550,000 people in a metro area of more than 1 million. Lately, it’s become a boomtown for megaprojects. Last year saw the groundbreaking of American Battery Factory, a $1.2 billion, 1,000-job gigafactory for the assembly of electric vehicle batteries.
Scion Power’s $81 million plant expansion adds another 100 jobs in Tucson. “We have the momentum in the battery space,” says Barbra Coffee, economic initiatives director for the City of Tucson, which is home to the University of Arizona and Pima Community College. “Arizona is uniquely suited for that due to our dry climate. That works well for the chemistry in the battery sector. ABF was a big win for us. It showcased our ability as a region to mobilize and come together quickly. When you add that to our incentives and our world-class workforce, we are tough to beat.”
