What’s Being Built in Queen Creek, Arizona: Project by Project, With a Status and the Date We Checked It

1.What’s Being Built in Queen Creek Right Now (September 2026)

Status is what the named source said on the date in the last column, not what a press release said at announcement. Where no completion date is published, the table says so.

2.Downtown Queen Creek: The Switchyard, The Perch and the Ellsworth-Ocotillo Block

Downtown carries about $200 million in private investment and roughly 230,000 square feet of commercial space, per the Town — its release posted January 14, 2026 said “nearly $200 million,” and its downtown page now says “more than.” Either way the comparison is the point: roughly 4,000 square feet of active commercial construction downtown in 2023. That is the whole story of downtown in two numbers, for a town that only incorporated on September 5, 1989. Sales from those buildings get taxed at the rates in our Queen Creek sales tax breakdown.

The Switchyard

$120 million on 10 acres at the northeast corner of Ellsworth and Ocotillo, developed by Creation with Horizon Real Estate Ltd., designed by GFF Design, built by LGE Design Build, ground broken May 7, 2025. Phase 1 is commercial; 215 apartments were in design as of June 2025, and the Town’s August 2026 downtown slide deck still lists that multifamily phase as “TBD.” The commercial space is reported as 54,000 square feet at groundbreaking, 48,000 square feet for Phase 1 in November 2025, and 47,950 square feet of restaurant, retail and office space in that August 2026 Town deck — the newest of the three, and effectively the November figure again. The same deck puts the opening in the fourth quarter of 2026 into the first quarter of 2027, with Postino scheduled to be the first tenant to open, in early October 2026.

The rest of the block

The Perch is 62,000 square feet of brewery, retail and restaurant space on Munoz Street, expected at the end of 2026 per a November 2025 report. Rusty Buckle Saloon is a country-themed 8,930-square-foot bar and restaurant at 21838 S. Ellsworth Road. The Matheson adds 20,000 square feet of offices at Ellsworth Loop and Ocotillo, and Magma Plaza converts the former Magma Engineering building into an 8,500-square-foot plaza. A Homewood Suites and QC Accounting finish the Town’s roster, alongside a rebuilt Circle K and Sweet Creek Boutique, both listed open.

3.What Are the Newest Restaurants in Queen Creek?

The honest answer for September 2026 is that the publicized names are signed, not serving — but one of them has a date. The Town’s own August 2026 downtown slide deck says Postino is scheduled to be The Switchyard’s first tenant to open, in early October 2026, with the rest of the center following in the fourth quarter of 2026 into the first quarter of 2027. Every other tenant below was announced for a downtown project the Town still lists as under construction. The first four come from the developer’s own site and trade-press coverage of the May 2025 groundbreaking; the second wave was reported on March 10, 2026 and was not all food, pairing Bamboo Sushi, described as an Arizona market debut, with ROOM and PORCH, Zara Nail Bar and Edward Jones.

Cornerstone at Queen Creek is not a construction project

It is the open, Walmart Supercenter-anchored center at the northwest corner of Rittenhouse and Ocotillo, owned by WDP Partners in a joint venture with the original property owner. No expansion or new construction there appeared in any source used for this tracker. The developer’s own page describes a 340,000-square-foot power center, but that page content is dated 2018, and an aggregator figure above 380,000 square feet could not be verified. For the centers and stores already trading, see our guide to shopping in Queen Creek.

4.LG Energy Solution: What Is Under Construction, and What Is Paused

One plant is being built and one is not. The cylindrical EV battery plant, which the Town describes as a one-million-square-foot building, is under construction on about 300 developed acres at the northeast corner of Ironwood and Germann. The energy storage systems plant, the LFP pouch line, had its construction paused in about June or July 2024, and no Town or company source confirmed a restart as of September 20, 2026.

The Town’s page put the facility at about 60% complete in August 2025, targets 1,500 jobs once the cylindrical plant is fully operational, and says about 150 employees had been hired through February 2026 — a figure still unrefreshed seven months later. Workers have trained at Central Arizona College’s Superstition Mountain Campus through the Future48 Workforce Accelerator. If you are timing a move around production start, build in slack and work from the 30-day relocation checklist.

5.Road Projects: SR 24, Ellsworth, Sossaman and Germann

Road work changes your day before any building does. One project is already restricting traffic: the City of Mesa’s Ellsworth Road widening, whose first phase started January 5, 2026 and cut northbound Ellsworth to one lane around the clock — not along the whole Germann-to-Ray job, but through Phase 1’s Segments 1 and 2, from Germann Road to Pecos/Willis Road. Mesa has not published how long that restriction lasts; the only published date is February 2027 for the project overall. Weigh it against our comparison of Queen Creek neighborhoods if you are choosing between addresses on that corridor.

Two things the list does not contain. No standalone widening project names Riggs Road or Signal Butte Road as its primary road: Riggs turns up only as an endpoint of other projects, and Signal Butte only in a secondary source discussing a possible future SR 24 interchange. And the Meridian Road corridor is history rather than current work: that groundbreaking release is dated January 2022 and an October 2022 report described the project as nearing completion. No primary source fixes a completion date, so the honest statement is that it appears to have finished around 2022 or 2023 and is not a current construction project. Near the plant, a February 2025 Town CIP update described crews building the northbound lane on Ironwood Drive and the first half-mile of Pecos Road for delivery in late 2025; nothing fresher confirms that it finished.

6.Police Headquarters, a Fire Station, a Hospital Wing and the Rec Center That Already Opened

The police headquarters is the biggest public building on the list: $96 million on Ellsworth Road north of Crewse Lane, near Summers Place, between Fire Station No. 1 and the Community Chambers. Council approved more than $11.3 million in related agreements on May 20, 2026 with design 90% complete, and the Town announced on June 8, 2026 that it had broken ground, closing Crewse Lane between Summers Place and Ellsworth Road until construction finishes — currently anticipated in 2028, which the May 2026 reporting put more precisely at July 2028. The Town splits the $96 million into $21 million growth-related, paid by police impact fees and dedicated construction sales tax on new development, and $75 million non-growth, paid mainly from pay-as-you-go reserves. Do not read the FY2026/27 budget’s $106.1 million for Police Master Plan facilities as the same number: that is a budget category, and no source used here splits it by building. How a capital program this size shows up on a tax bill is covered in our property tax guide.

• New fire station, southern area of town — design only. The FY2026/27 budget includes $4.5 million for fire and medical facilities and equipment, including design of a new southern station. No site, groundbreaking date or construction timeline is published.
• Banner Ironwood Medical Center — under construction. A 32,000-plus-square-foot addition at 37000 N. Gantzel Road broke ground August 27–28, 2026: a two-story building on the existing Emergency Department, an interventional radiology suite with pre-op and post-op space, and an expanded ER lobby. Archsol is architect, Mortenson contractor, completion slated December 2027. Where the hospital sits among the area’s other options is covered in our guide to hospitals and urgent care.
• Queen Creek Recreation & Aquatic Center — already open. The recreation and aquatic center opened March 29–30, 2025 and the aquatic side in May 2025. It is not a construction project any more, whatever an older article says.

One caution on the hospital. A separate, undated description of a larger Banner Ironwood expansion involving cardiac services and a bed count circulates in trade-press results. It does not match the August 2026 release, the two could not be reconciled, and only the August 2026 release is reflected above.

7.Are New Schools Being Built in Queen Creek?

Not yet — they are requested. The Queen Creek Unified School District capital plan, as reported in August 2025, asks the state School Facilities Division to fund two new elementary schools at 750 K–6 students each, opening before 2029, plus additions at Crismon Junior High and Crismon High School of 500 students of capacity each, projected to open by 2031. No site has been chosen: the district holds five vacant parcels under consideration. Which campuses serve which addresses today is a different question, and our Queen Creek schools guide is where to start on it.

The funding route matters more than the drawings. QCUSD has no active bond funding: as of August 2025 reporting, the district’s last two bond requests had been rejected by voters, and the 2024 override passed — the certified county canvass for November 5, 2024 records 53.71% yes, 22,177 votes to 19,115, for a 15% maintenance-and-operations override running six years. The county’s election list shows no QCUSD measure at all in 2025. That measure is a maintenance-and-operations override, not a construction bond, so the buildings still depend on state awards. The division reviews district capital plans annually, with plans due September 1 and awards made in December, and construction begins in the winter after an award. No award had been confirmed in any source available for this tracker.

The demand behind the request is measurable. The state report card page for QCUSD listed 15,034 students when we checked it on September 20, 2026. Reporting from August 2025 put enrollment growth at more than 5,000 students over five years, to 14,589 at that point, and projected roughly 17,500 by 2034–35.

8.The Northeast Growth Area: What Has Not Been Auctioned

The battery complex exists because of one land auction. On April 19, 2022 the Arizona State Land Department sold a 650.5-acre parcel at the northeast corner of Ironwood Drive and Germann Road, plus smaller adjoining rights-of-way, for $84,444,000 to ES America, LLC, on a single bid at the minimum price. New rooftops in the same corridor come from private master plans instead; our rundown of the builders active in Queen Creek covers who is selling there.

The more useful finding is a negative one. A larger 914.78-acre parcel at the northwest corner of Ironwood and Germann, minimum bid $86,130,000, was postponed repeatedly through 2021 and then recorded as Auction Cancelled as of December 1, 2021. No re-auction appears in the department’s own auction history through April 2026 — and that document, running from FY2017 to the present, holds no Queen Creek-area auction entry of any kind after the April 2022 sale.

9.How to Follow Along Yourself

Every fact above came from a page you can open. Work through them in this order, and remember that a status without a date is a rumor.

1. Start with the Town’s downtown project page. It is the only source carrying a current status label per building, and it settles arguments about whether something is open.
2. Use the Town’s capital-projects portal for anything with a road name in it. Projects are listed by number and name, so you can follow one intersection across budget years.
3. Search the Town’s current planning and zoning cases for your nearest cross-streets before assuming a vacant parcel stays vacant. Cases appear there long before dirt moves.
4. For the battery plant, read the Town’s economic development page and write down the date attached to the hiring figure — it read February 2026 when we checked in September 2026.
5. For SR 24, go to ADOT rather than the Town, and download the fact sheets linked from the project page.
6. Note the date you checked, the way every row above does.

Numbers you will see reported two ways

One boundary to keep straight while you search: San Tan Valley has been its own incorporated town since September 17, 2025, and its projects do not appear on Queen Creek’s trackers or in this guide. Our side-by-side of the two communities covers what else changed at that line.