The acreage was on the market for eight months and attracted a fair share of interest, Rick Brewer, senior associate of Sperry Van Ness Mullin in Phoenix, tells GlobeSt.com. The school district will use the property to park its 114-bus fleet, which logs 1.6 million miles per year in transporting students. Brewer says he's uncertain whether a maintenance facility will be constructed on the commercially zoned land.

The acreage is situated about a mile west of Loop 101, also known as the Aqua Fria Freeway. That proximity will provide ready access to the school network that services a student population of about 35,000. The state's fourth-largest district encompasses 100 square miles in the suburbs of Glendale and Peoria. It has 25 elementary and five high schools, with two elementary schools under construction. Peoria Unified School District also is home to the Challenger Learning Center of Arizona, a world-class educational complex that neighbors one of the district's high schools.

"It's a good location," Brewer says of the level-grade, utility-served site in the northwest quadrant of Maricopa County. He represented the seller, Swab LP, a local investment group that's owned the undeveloped land since 1992. Paul Timm of Trust Realty Advisers in Phoenix acted as a broker consultant for the school district in the negotiations.