Mesa is one City Council vote away from putting a contractor to work on the new Red Mountain Aquatic Complex. On August 31, 2026, the Council will consider a pre-construction services contract worth $136,295 for the facility planned near Red Mountain Park at 7745 E. Brown Road — a project that would give northeast Mesa its first major city-owned aquatic center.
If you live in northeast Mesa, here is what this vote means for you
Council District 5 does not have a city-owned public aquatic center right now. Families in the 85207 and 85215 zip codes who want lap lanes or a public recreational pool have to drive elsewhere in the city. This contract is the formal first step that has to happen before any construction can start.
Once approved, the contractor will spend several months doing cost estimating, scheduling, and phasing work. Those outputs set the budget ceiling for construction. No ground gets broken until that ceiling — called a Guaranteed Maximum Price — is agreed on. The pool itself is still years away. But without this vote, the project does not move forward at all.
A new aquatic complex near Red Mountain Park would bring public swim lanes and recreational water amenities to a corridor already anchored by one of Mesa’s most-used parks. For homeowners in the surrounding area, a park-adjacent public pool is a real lifestyle and market signal for the neighborhood.
What the $136,295 CMAR contract actually covers
The contract is for pre-construction services under a delivery model called Construction Manager at Risk, or CMAR. Mesa is using CMAR because it brings the contractor into the project before the final design is locked in. That gives the city a builder’s eye on costs and logistics before committing to a full construction contract.
Under this model, Sun Eagle Corporation’s work includes four things: reviewing the design for constructability, preparing detailed cost estimates, developing a construction schedule and sequencing plan, and producing the Guaranteed Maximum Price. The GMP is the number that caps what the city will pay to build the facility. Council has to approve the GMP separately before construction begins.
The $136,295 pre-construction fee is not the construction budget. It is the cost of doing the homework that makes the construction budget reliable. Think of it as paying an architect and a builder to sit in the same room before the foundation is poured.
The project carries the internal code CP0757RMAQ. The Council report and a site map are on file with the city as part of the August 31 agenda packet, item 4-c.
Aquatic facility mechanical infrastructure — the kind of systems that pre-construction cost estimating and constructability reviews are designed to budget accurately. (InsideTheValley.com)
Who is Sun Eagle Corporation?
Sun Eagle Corporation is a commercial general contractor and construction manager based in Chandler, Arizona. The firm has been building municipal projects since 1978. It has completed more than 386 projects totaling over $1.7 billion in construction value.
Sun Eagle holds Small and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise certifications from the City of Phoenix. It is also certified as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The company lists aquatic facilities construction among its service areas and has experience with the CMAR delivery method.
Sun Eagle previously worked on the Mesa Aquatic Complex, which gives the firm direct familiarity with how Mesa structures public pool projects.
How Mesa’s 2024 bond funds this project
Mesa voters approved two bond measures in November 2024. The public safety bond totaled $90 million. The Parks and Culture bond totaled $170 million. Together they passed by a wide margin.
Inside the $170 million Parks and Culture bond, Mesa set aside $67.2 million for two new aquatics facilities. The Red Mountain Aquatic Complex is one of them. The other is the Southeast Aquatics Facility. Parks department director Andrea Moore has cited a total cost of approximately $34 million for the Red Mountain pool. That figure includes roughly $3 million for design work shared with the Southeast Aquatics Facility.
A designer for the Red Mountain facility was already hired as of a July 2025 City Council update by City Engineer Lance Webb. The $136,295 pre-construction CMAR contract is the next formal step in the procurement sequence.
The Fremont Pool question: closing one pool, building another
There is a real tension in Mesa’s aquatics picture right now. The city’s parks department proposed roughly $800,000 in parks budget cuts in early 2025. Part of those cuts included closing Fremont Aquatic Complex — an aging facility that Mesa cited as saving the city around $235,000 per year once shuttered.
At the same time, a city budget discussion noted that construction of the Red Mountain aquatic facility was “not planned until later in the decade.” So the city is closing one pool today to save money while moving toward building a new one that is still years away.
For residents who relied on Fremont Pool — located at 1101 N. Power Rd. — the gap matters. District 5 families will not have a replacement aquatic facility in the short term. That is the honest read of where things stand heading into the August 31 vote. The pre-construction contract advancing now shows the project is moving through formal procurement, but there is still a significant distance between this vote and opening day.
If you are watching Mesa’s broader growth in the northeast corridor, there is more happening nearby. Hawes Crossing Village 7 is another August 2026 Council item reshaping northeast Mesa land use. The Eastmark Aquatic Complex is Mesa’s second bond-funded pool project also moving through a CMAR contract vote this month.
The August 31 City Council vote, and what follows it
The Mesa City Council meets August 31, 2026. Agenda item 4-c is the contract award to Sun Eagle Corporation for pre-construction services on CP0757RMAQ. Council approval is required — staff recommend it, but the Council decides.
If approved, Sun Eagle begins the pre-construction phase: constructability review, cost estimating, sequencing, and GMP development. The GMP comes back to the Council as a separate vote before any construction contract is signed. Construction itself, and eventually an opening date, depends on how that GMP process goes.
No official opening date has been set. The project’s own budget documents describe construction as happening “later in the decade.” The August 31 vote is not a groundbreaking — it is the gate that has to open first.
