If you've driven Signal Butte Road or Ellsworth Road through Eastmark this year, you've probably done the same thing everyone else out here does: slow down at a fenced lot, squint at a rendering on a construction sign, and try to guess whether that's a restaurant going in or another dental office. For years the running joke in Eastmark, Augusta Ranch and Superstition Springs was that there were thousands of new rooftops and nowhere close by to eat dinner. That joke is finally starting to lose its punchline, but not in the way most people assume.
There isn't one shopping center opening out here. There are three, built by three different developers, each running on its own construction schedule, and each at a completely different stage right now. Treating them as a single "East Mesa is finally getting retail" story is how you end up disappointed outside a Sprouts that hasn't opened yet, or surprised that a hotel you thought was done won't take a reservation until next year.
Three developers, three different finish lines
The corridor between Southern Avenue and Ray Road, roughly bounded by Ellsworth and Signal Butte roads, is home to Medina Station, East Gate Plaza and EastMarket at Eastmark. None of them broke ground at the same time, none of them is on the same construction schedule, and none of them will be "done" on the same day. Here's where each one actually stands as of the end of August.
Medina Station: the store you can already walk into
Medina Station sits at Signal Butte Road and Southern Avenue, just off US-60, on 64 acres that developer SimonCRE is turning into roughly 300,000 square feet of retail alongside more than 600 new apartments. The anchor is a 148,000-square-foot Target, the retailer's sixth location in Mesa. Target opened in July, complete with a CVS Pharmacy, a Starbucks Café and a Target Optical built into the store, and it's currently the only tenant at Medina Station actually open for business.
Everything else is still catching up. Boot Barn and Dick's Sporting Goods, the latter an 80,000-square-foot two-story flagship, were named as the next tenants likely to open after Target. A restaurant row anchored by names like Café Zupas, CAVA, Five Guys, Mission BBQ, OHSO Brewery and Handel's Homemade Ice Cream is under construction, along with service tenants like US Bank and GoodVets. As of late spring, ABC15 reported that the restaurant row was still a work in progress, not a lineup with confirmed opening dates. So if you're picturing a finished center because you can already buy groceries and get a prescription filled, you're picturing a few months ahead of where the site actually is.
East Gate Plaza: built, except for the one thing everyone's waiting for
A few miles away, at the corner of Elliot and Ellsworth roads, East Gate Plaza has had a head start. The 17-acre, $60 million center was slated to finish its retail construction in the first quarter of this year, which means tenants like Starbucks, Farmer Boys, Ono Hawaiian BBQ, Discount Tire, Playa Bowls, Kolache Café, Fresh Monkee and FitFX have had months now to move in and open their doors. This is the plaza that most looks like a finished neighborhood shopping center if you drive by today.
What's missing is the piece that was supposed to be the centerpiece. The Cambria Hotel, a 107-room property with a rooftop bar and restaurant meant to be open to the public, broke ground in January. Developers are targeting an early 2027 opening, not this year. That's a meaningful gap for anyone picturing East Gate Plaza as a finished project: the coffee and fast-casual side of the center is largely live, but the hospitality anchor that was supposed to give southeast Mesa its first real rooftop hangout is still more than a year out, as Hoodline reported this spring.
EastMarket at Eastmark: a finished building isn't a finished grocery store
The third piece is the one Eastmark residents have wanted longest: a grocery store inside the community instead of a drive to Superstition Springs or beyond. EastMarket, at the northeast corner of Ray and Ellsworth roads, is a 6.6-acre center anchored by a 23,299-square-foot Sprouts Farmers Market, with nearly 45,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space total. Construction broke ground last October, and Eastmark's own announcement put building completion around August of this year, which is right about now.
But a finished building and an open grocery store are two different milestones. Sprouts itself isn't expected to open until the fourth quarter of 2026. So even once the shell is done and the parking lot is striped, there's still a stretch of months where the center looks ready and simply isn't stocking shelves yet. In the meantime, the dining anchor already serving Eastmark residents is Steadfast Diner, a farm-to-table restaurant tied to Steadfast Farm that's been open on Inspirian Parkway well before any of this construction started. If you want dinner tonight, that's where you go. If you want a full grocery run without leaving the neighborhood, that's still a fall-into-winter wait.
If you're heading out this month
Cutting through the construction fencing and press releases, here's what's genuinely usable right now versus what's still coming:
- Open now: Target at Medina Station (with in-store CVS, Starbucks and Target Optical), Steadfast Diner in Eastmark, and most of the coffee, fast-casual and service tenants at East Gate Plaza
- Opening in the coming months: Dick's Sporting Goods and the Medina Station restaurant row, Sprouts and its co-tenants at EastMarket
- Opening in early 2027: The Cambria Hotel and its rooftop bar at East Gate Plaza
The corridor won't feel finished until next year
What ties these three projects together isn't a shared opening date. It's a shared cause: East Mesa's population grew faster than its retail base for years, and now three separate developers are racing to close that gap at once, which is exactly why it feels chaotic from the driver's seat. Medina Station's Target opened this summer while its restaurant row was still under construction. East Gate Plaza's shops filled in months ago while its signature hotel is still a job site. EastMarket's building is essentially done while its anchor grocer sits empty for another quarter.
None of that means the corridor is behind schedule. It means "East Mesa is getting retail" was never one story with one finish line. It's three, and the last of them doesn't wrap until early 2027 when the Cambria Hotel opens its rooftop bar. Until then, the honest answer to "is it open yet" depends entirely on which fence you're standing in front of.
Watching a corner of your own neighborhood fill in this fast tends to raise a different question too: what does all this new retail actually do to home values on the surrounding streets. If you're weighing that question for a property near Eastmark, Augusta Ranch or the rest of southeast Mesa, Jesse Lowery can walk you through what the data shows so far and get you a straight answer on what your home is worth right now.
