The Craftsman: Southeast Mesa Is Finally Getting a Town Center
The Craftsman: Southeast Mesa Is Finally Getting a Town Center
The most common complaint I hear from buyers touring southeast Mesa isn’t about the homes. It’s that there’s nowhere to walk to. That’s the gap The Craftsman is meant to fill.
Approved by Mesa City Council in May 2024, The Craftsman is a 22 acre mixed use development at Elliot and Hawes Roads, just west of the Amazon distribution facility at Elliot and the Loop 202. It’s the first vertically integrated mixed use project in Mesa’s District 6 — meaning retail and live/work space underneath residential, rather than a strip center across a parking lot from an apartment complex.
That distinction sounds like planning jargon. It isn’t. It’s the difference between a place you drive through and a place you walk around in.
What’s Actually Being Built
The approved plan is a genuine mix rather than apartments with a token coffee shop bolted on. The split is roughly 65% residential and 35% commercial, which is a requirement of the Hawes Crossing Planned Development Area rather than a developer’s preference. That requirement is why this project looks different from most of what gets built out here.
- 386 multifamily units across the site
- Two office buildings and two restaurants, one with a large patio
- A two story mixed use building with 12 apartments above six retail spaces
- A building with four live/work units on the ground floor and 18 residences above
- Two urban plazas and a trail
The plazas and the trail are the part I’d point to. Those are placemaking elements — the things that determine whether people actually linger somewhere or just complete an errand and leave.
Why This Matters If You Already Live Out Here
Southeast Mesa has added rooftops at an extraordinary pace over the past decade. Eastmark, Cadence at Gateway, Hawes Crossing, and the neighborhoods along the Elliot Road corridor have brought in tens of thousands of residents. What hasn’t kept up is the everything else — the restaurants, the gathering places, the reasons to leave your subdivision that don’t involve a fifteen minute drive.
City officials have been explicit that this is what they’ve been pushing for. Councilman Scott Somers described The Craftsman as proof of concept — not a perfect project, but evidence that a vertically integrated, market rate mixed use development is feasible in southeast Mesa. Councilwoman Jenn Duff framed it as an example of how to do mixed use successfully and a way of creating a place for community.
If you own a home within a few miles of Elliot and Hawes, that’s the sentence worth paying attention to. When a city proves a development type works in a given area, more of it tends to follow.
The Hawes Crossing Connection
The Craftsman sits inside the Hawes Crossing Planned Development Area, the 1,100 acre masterplan on the Mesa Gilbert border that I’ve written about before as one of the most underrated communities in the East Valley.
That’s not incidental. Hawes Crossing was zoned with a 35% non residential requirement specifically so that commercial and employment uses would get built alongside the housing rather than after it — or never. The Craftsman is that requirement becoming real.
For anyone weighing a home purchase in Hawes Crossing, this changes the calculation. You’re not buying on a promise that retail will show up eventually. There’s an approved site plan with restaurants, offices, and plazas in it.
A realistic note on timing
Approval is not the same as completion. Site plan approval came in May 2024, and large mixed use projects routinely take years to move from approval through construction to occupancy — and some get revised or delayed along the way.
If The Craftsman is part of why you’re considering a home nearby, buy the home on its own merits and treat the town center as upside rather than a certainty. I’d rather tell you that now than have you feel misled in three years.
What It Signals About Southeast Mesa
The Craftsman isn’t happening in isolation. The Elliot Road corridor has drawn major employers, the Amazon facility sits directly east of this site, and the area around Signal Butte and State Route 24 has seen a run of large project approvals.
The pattern is consistent: employment first, then housing, then the amenities that make the housing worth living in. Southeast Mesa is currently in that third phase, which historically is where a submarket’s desirability starts pulling away from its price.
Whether that shows up as appreciation depends on execution and on the broader market. But the direction of travel is clear, and it’s the reason I keep telling buyers not to write off this part of the Valley as just new subdivisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
At Elliot and Hawes Roads in southeast Mesa, inside the Hawes Crossing Planned Development Area, just west of the Amazon distribution building at Elliot and the Loop 202. It sits in Mesa City Council District 6.
The residential component is multifamily — 386 units, plus apartments above retail and live/work units. This is a rental and mixed use project, not a for sale single family neighborhood. If you want to buy a home nearby, the surrounding Hawes Crossing communities are where to look.
It means the uses stack rather than sit side by side — retail or live/work space on the ground floor with residences directly above. Most suburban “mixed use” is horizontal: a shopping center next to an apartment complex, separated by parking. Vertical integration is what makes a walkable district rather than a set of destinations you drive between.
Walkable amenities and a genuine town center generally support values in the surrounding area, and that’s a pattern I’ve watched play out elsewhere in the Valley. But nothing is guaranteed, timelines slip, and any effect depends on the project actually being built as approved. Treat it as a positive signal about the area’s direction, not a number you can bank.
No confirmed completion date. Site plan approval came in May 2024, and projects of this size typically take several years from approval to opening. For current construction status, the City of Mesa’s development services records are the authoritative source — or ask me and I’ll check what’s moving.
The Bottom Line
Southeast Mesa built the houses first. The Craftsman is part of what comes next — and it’s the kind of project that separates a place people live from a place people just sleep.
If you’re looking at Hawes Crossing, Eastmark, Cadence, or anywhere along the Elliot corridor and want a straight read on what’s actually approved versus what’s just talk, that’s a conversation I’m happy to have.
Melissa Bailey
Melissa serves Mesa, Apache Junction, and the broader East Valley, helping buyers and sellers navigate master planned communities, new construction, and the fast changing southeast Mesa growth corridor.
Equal Housing Opportunity. Project details reflect the site plan approved by Mesa City Council in May 2024 and are subject to change; approval does not guarantee construction or completion. This article is general information only and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice, and is not a prediction of future property values. Confirm your specific numbers and circumstances with your attorney, tax advisor, lender, or escrow officer.
Categories
Recent Posts
