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Projects slated for last of GM Proving Grounds

BY SCOTT SHUMAKER

Tribune Staff Writer

Alarge part of southeast Mesa’s economic explosion has centered on the 5,000 acres that formerly served as the General Motors Desert Proving Grounds for over 50 years.

GM used the land to test vehicles and components in hot weather conditions.

In the early 2000s, this land became more valuable as real estate than for testing Cadillacs, so the company started selling its acreage to developers before finally vacating it and moving to Yuma in 2009.

Ironically, the portion of the Proving Grounds sold first by GM has become the last to be developed.

But these holdouts of land are starting to see recent planning activity, and the future for the last bits of the Desert Proving Grounds is coming into focus.

Phoenix businessman William Levine’s company Pacific Proving LLC bought 1,800 acres from GM in 2004, two years This still from an old video about the GM Proving Grounds in Mesa shows what the site used to look like before it was torn down more than a decade

ago. (YouTube)

before Scottsdale-based DMB Proving Grounds bought the upper portion.

As DMB’s acreage saw the Eastmark developments spring up, and big industrial campuses attract the likes of Apple and Facebook, the land owned by Pacific Proving south of SR 24 remained vacant.

In satellite views of the land, between Pecos Road and the new Bell Bank Park sports complex, vehicle trackways are still visible.

Given the intensity of industrial warehouse activity in southeast Mesa, it may not be surprising that this strip of land appears destined to be a row of mega warehouses. In late April, Pacific Proving LLC sold a large tract of this land to Phoenix-based Mesa BA Land LLC, and shortly thereafter, on May 10, the Mesa Design Review Board looked at plans for two industrial parks totalling 1,268,000 square feet spread across four buildings.

On May 25, the Mesa Planning and Zoning board approved a zoning case for the 644,000 square foot Legacy Industrial Park.

According to the project narrative the industrial park “will be capable of supporting a variety of light industrial and employment-type uses, such as manufacturing and processing, wholesaling, research, warehousing, e-commerce, data centers and distribution activities.”

It will have 108 loading docks.

If built, the Legacy Industrial Park and Legacy Business Park would join another large industrial project in the works for this strip of land. In December of 2021, Mesa City Council approved Amazon’s Project Cork, a 700,000 square foot industrial building on 71 acres to the east of the Legacy projects.

Between these three industrial projects and the opening of the Bell Bank Park, not much of the former GM Proving Grounds remains unplanned .

Mesa trucker named ‘Highway Angel’ for rescue

TRIBUNE NEWS STAFF

The Truckload Carriers Association has named Mesa truck driver Christopher Hight a “Highway Angel” for rescuing a mother and her baby trapped in a vehicle that had been hit from behind by a truck.

Hight, who drives for Melton Truck Lines in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was driving last fall on Highway 35 in Texas between Laredo and Dallas when a truck struck the back of a car ahead of him.

There was a tire in the road, and Hight supposed the car swerved to miss the tire but unsafely veered into the truck’s lane, the association said.

“I saw a big ball of dust, and when it cleared, I saw a car that was smashed completely,” Hight said.

He pulled his truck over to offer help at the scene. The truck that hit the car also stopped and Hight said the trucker was able to get out of his vehicle – he suffered no injuries. The car that was hit by the truck had extensive damage in the rear of the car.

“The trunk was actually pushed up against the driver’s seat,” Hight said. “Inside all that, there was a baby in there.”

Hight said the mother, who suffered some injuries, but was able to get out of the car once he peeled metal out of her way. She was screaming, wanting to check on her baby boy in the back seat.

“I jumped over there and started trying to get the baby out,” he said. “We started peeling the metal back and stuff off the roof and all around.”

Hight and another bystander got the baby out and into his mom’s arms. The only visible injuries to the child was a bloody lip. Once the mother was reunited with her baby boy, she held up the child to show the truck driver that had hit her that he was okay.

“The driver fell down and started crying, and I started crying,” said Hight, the father of six children. “When it comes to kids getting hurt, I just can’t deal with it.”

Neither the mother or child suffered serious injury.

Hight and had been driving a truck for around eight months when the accident took place.

“They needed help,” Hight said about why he stopped. “I hope someone helps me if something happens with me!”

Since the program’s inception in August 1997, nearly 1,300 professional truck drivers have been recognized as Highway Angels for exemplary kindness, courtesy, and courage displayed while on the job.  Christopher Hight of Mesa was named a Highway Angel for rescuing a mother and her baby trapped in a vehicle that had been hit from behind by a truck. (Truckload Carriers