Article originally posted in the Phoenix Business Journal on Nov. 9, 2026.

A novel sustainable campus where trash turns into treasure next to the Salt River in south Phoenix is finally moving ahead. The project is expected to cost more than $1 billion.

Phoenix City Council⁠ approved an amended development agreement on its consent agenda at a Nov. 4 meeting for the proposed Resource Innovation Campus on roughly 30 city-owned acres along 27th Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road. That agreement was originally approved in late 2024.

Now, the team working on the project is moving on to the site plan approvals process, said Tom Roberts, managing partner at TWR Real Estate Partners, which is the lead developer for the project.

The project was conceived over a decade ago by Krause Interior Architecture, which won a global contest seeking ideas from cities across the globe for a resource innovation headquarters campus that would turn municipal waste into reusable resources such as aviation fuel.

Projections made when the development agreement was approved in December 2024 had expected construction to begin in 2025. Developers have completed “environmental assessments, land appraisals, fair market lease rate assessments and some preliminary work” since Council’s original approval, according to city documents. The development team has also provided documentation demonstrating its financial capacity to complete the project.

The agreement updated Nov. 4 finalized some terms around city waste transferred and delivered to the station adjacent to the project site, and eliminated a two-phase development structure. Groundbreaking is tentative though expected near the end of next year or early 2028.

The project aims to help meet a goal adopted by Phoenix City Council to achieved 50% waste reduction by 2030, and produce zero waste by 2050. Phoenix is one of the rare few local municipalities that handles its own waste management.

“Taking the city’s waste stream and recovering its value as recycled materials, reused goods, renewable energy… it’s going to be a pretty special project,” Michael Krause at Krause Architecture + Interiors⁠ said.

The Resource Innovation Campus will span 46,000 square-feet and have dedicated classrooms, office laboratory and conference space and other workforce development components. Remaining acreage will be for industrial development for businesses focused on the municipal waste reclamation efforts, set up as public-private partnerships.

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