Phoenix Arizona

The ASU Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute runs E+I @ 850PBC, a coworking and event space inside the Phoenix Bioscience Core — 16 open workstations plus a 928-sq-ft event space, home to the HEALab health accelerator for bioscience and health-tech founders.

FlexEtc opened its first Arizona location in Phoenix — a 70,000-sq-ft combined coworking-and-co-warehousing hub where founders can rent space for inventory, packing, and shipping alongside professional workspace starting at $650/month.

The City of Phoenix's PHX Core Innovation District spans downtown and the Warehouse District, anchored by the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, ASU's Downtown campus, and Galvanize — home to more than 130 startup and creative companies alongside 6 million sq ft of research and academic space.

The City of Phoenix's Office of Innovation runs the Innovate PHX Challenge, a biannual hackathon with Venture Café Phoenix where teams pitch solutions to top City priorities to judges for cash prizes and a shot at prototyping with the City.

Phoenix-based incubator SEED SPOT and Canyon Angels won a $300,000 U.S. Economic Development Administration grant to train 180 new angel investors and deploy $4 million into 18 early-stage EdTech, MedTech, and CleanTech startups over three years.

Grand Canyon University's Canyon Ventures Center, a 30,000-sq-ft accelerator in west Phoenix, houses more than 30 startups rent-free in exchange for hiring GCU students — about 70 students currently work there in marketing, app development, and customer service roles.

Phoenix holds a State of Arizona Designation of Assured Water Supply, confirming the city's current supplies can meet demand for more than 100 years based on anticipated usage — a standard few Western cities can claim for large new water users.

Phoenix draws roughly 60% of its water from the Salt and Verde rivers via the Salt River Project, about 40% from the Colorado River through the Central Arizona Project, and only about 2% from groundwater — a diversified, drought-buffered supply portfolio.

Phoenix's Water Resource Plan, refreshed under Arizona's 100-year assured-supply standard, found the city has enough water to meet demand for the next 50 years and beyond under growth, drought, and climate-change scenarios.

APS is building the up-to-2,000-MW Desert Sun natural-gas plant west of Gila Bend, targeted for 2028, with Phase 2 structured as a subscription model letting extra-large customers like data centers fund their own share of new generation capacity.

SRP contracted NextEra Energy Resources to build 3,000 MW of new solar — enough to power 595,000 Arizona homes — delivering 500 MW per year from 2029 through 2034, as part of SRP's plan to more than double total system generation capacity by 2035.

SRP sought Board approval to add 820 MW of fast-ramping natural-gas generation at its Coolidge Generating Station, citing Phoenix-area population growth running more than three times the national average plus new and expanded large industrial operations.

Arizona State University's Downtown Phoenix campus enrolled 10,800 students in fall 2026, part of ASU's overall 203,700+ student body for 2025-26 — a dense, in-city talent feeder within walking distance of downtown employers.

The 10-college Maricopa Community Colleges system (including Phoenix College, South Mountain, and GateWay, all inside the City of Phoenix) serves more than 140,000 students annually and posted its 12th consecutive semester of enrollment gains heading into fall 2025.

GateWay Community College, located in the Phoenix Bioscience Core, hosted Arizona's first Technology Support Specialist apprenticeship under the national CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech initiative with ARIZONA@WORK, the same year Arizona's tech sector added 2,500+ net new jobs and employers posted 108,000+ IT openings.

Phoenix's civilian labor force totaled 863,731 workers with a 68% labor-force participation rate (vs. 60% statewide and 63% nationally), and total city employment grew from 1,013,840 (2021) to 1,095,437 (2023), a 3.9% annualized rate.

The City of Phoenix reached an estimated population of 1,673,164 as of July 1, 2024 (U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2024 estimate), making it the nation's fifth-largest city and the core of a rapidly expanding regional labor pool.

Mayo Clinic announced a $1.9 billion expansion of its north Phoenix campus on March 3, 2025, adding 1.2 million square feet, 48 patient beds, 11 operating rooms, and 3,500 new jobs.

On March 24, 2026, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and City Council approved a $50 million city investment — the largest direct city contribution ever to a single bioscience project — for ASU Health's new downtown medical school at the Phoenix Bioscience Core.

McCarthy Building Companies, a 100%-employee-owned national builder, signed a nearly-100,000-square-foot lease at 3133 E. Camelback Road to relocate and expand its Phoenix regional headquarters, reported July 10, 2026, with opening slated for late 2027.

Exact Sciences (maker of the Cologuard cancer-screening test) is building a 250,000-square-foot lab, office, manufacturing and warehouse facility on 17 acres at Sky Harbor Center near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, projected to create more than 800 jobs.

Aerospace and defense electronics manufacturer Mercury Systems is expanding its existing Phoenix manufacturing operations by roughly 50,000 square feet, adding more than 50 jobs, according to an October 13, 2026 report.

Visit Phoenix, the city's tourism bureau, signed a 24,722-square-foot lease at 1 E. Washington St. in the CityScape tower in downtown Phoenix for its new headquarters, announced February 4, 2025, with move-in planned for Q4 2025.

Arizona's Qualified Facility Tax Credit gives manufacturing and headquarters companies locating in Phoenix a refundable state income tax credit equal to the lowest of 10% of capital investment, $20,000 per net new job ($30,000 for projects over $2 billion), or $30 million per taxpayer per year, with a $250,000 minimum investment.

Phoenix projects using GPLET can replace real property tax with an excise tax for up to 25 years, with the excise rate itself abatable for the first 8 years after occupancy if the site sits in both a Central Business District and a Redevelopment Area.

Arizona's Quality Jobs Tax Credit pays Phoenix-area (urban) employers up to $9,000 per net new job — $3,000 a year for three years — for projects as small as a $500,000 investment and 25 jobs paying 200% of the county median wage.

Businesses operating inside Phoenix's Foreign-Trade Zone No. 75, administered by the City of Phoenix, pay Class 6 property tax at just 5% of assessed valuation on qualifying new improvements and personal property versus the standard commercial rate.

The City of Phoenix has 42 federally certified Opportunity Zones, per its Community and Economic Development Department, letting investors defer and reduce capital-gains taxes by reinvesting gains into qualifying Phoenix projects.

Phoenix's Priority Expedited Plan Review program, run by the Planning and Development Department, lets qualifying projects pay for premium, City Council-approved expedited civil plan review when normal timelines would cause significant scheduling or financial harm.