Forest City Enterprises Inc. of Cleveland, in partnership with Covington Capital of Aspen, CO has been named master developer for 9,000 acres, which will eventually become Mesa del Sol. "With a project of this consequence, there will be hundreds of acres of employment centers, business parks and retail uses," Dean Wingert, vice president of Forest City Land Group, tells GlobeSt.com. "The size is just overwhelming."

Wingert says ground-breaking on the multi-million-dollar community is still at least two years away as the development firms work though the permitting process with city officials.

The cost of the project should stretch into "hundreds of millions of dollars" and take decades to complete, Wingert added. "What we have here is just the beginning of a very long process," he said. "We still have to get consultants and engineers and take the conceptual planning work that the state has done through the approval process with the city."