Sunbelt is pressing ahead with a long-planned mixed-use campus at Bell Road and 19th Avenue in North Phoenix, with apartments and a new Aldi grocery store pitched as the main draws. Under the Bell 17 concept, roughly 82–93 acres of assembled parcels in the Deer Valley corridor would be turned into housing, office, industrial and retail space. If it comes together as pitched, the project would drop hundreds of new apartments and a discount-grocery option into a stretch of Bell Road that has seen more than its share of retail turnover.
According to the Phoenix Business Journal, Sunbelt’s Deer Valley proposal, labeled Bell 17 in marketing materials, includes multifamily buildings along with industrial and office components and identifies an Aldi grocery store as one of the retail pads. Reporter Hailey Mensik detailed in an April 15, 2026 story that the developer is framing the site as a mixed-use employment and housing campus.
What Sunbelt Plans
An offering memorandum for the nearby Deer Valley Plaza II parcel outlines Sunbelt’s Bell 17 vision as spanning roughly 82 acres with about 1 million square feet of mixed-use space. That blueprint calls for general industrial buildings, flex office and corporate office space, hotel and retail pads alongside apartment sites. The memorandum lists specific apartment projects and square-footage allocations for the industrial and office pieces and presents the broader campus as a multi-phase business park. The marketing packet is available on LoopNet.
Where the Land Came From
Records from the Arizona State Land Department show that Sunbelt paid $26.5 million for a 93.257-acre parcel near the southwest corner of 19th Avenue and Bell Road at a 2018 auction. Per Arizona State Land Department auction records, the sale was part of the department’s 2018 auction schedule, and contemporaneous coverage by AZ Big Media reported the transaction and noted the parcel’s planned-community zoning.
Why Aldi Matters
Industry reporting indicates that Aldi is in the middle of an aggressive U.S. rollout and has a sizable Phoenix-area buildout in the works, giving developers a dependable, value-focused grocery anchor for mixed-use projects. The Shelby Report has highlighted Aldi’s push to add dozens of Phoenix-area stores and new distribution capacity, a pattern that helps explain why grocers like this are being courted as anchors at projects such as Bell 17.
Timeline, Traffic and Housing Tradeoffs
Projects on this scale typically move forward in phases, with entitlements, off-site infrastructure and traffic mitigation shaping both timing and final density. In practical terms, that could mean the apartments and the Aldi-anchored retail pad arrive before the larger office or industrial buildings, while the city weighs transportation upgrades against the boost in housing supply.
Takeaway
For North Phoenix, Bell 17 would plug new housing and a discount grocery option into land that remained under state ownership until the 2018 sale, altering the feel of this stretch of Bell Road. How quickly the Deer Valley corridor starts to look different now hinges on Sunbelt’s permitting, leasing and construction decisions over the coming year.
