Mesa's hotel development boom to benefit from planned NAU workforce center
Northern Arizona University announced it will open a Mesa Workforce Development Center focused on hospitality education near the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in 2024.
NAU's School of Hotel and Restaurant Management will offer hotel restaurant management and hospitality degree programs as well as noncredit credentials. The university will build a two-story building at SkyBridge Arizona with one floor dedicated to restaurant training and the other with classrooms, food and beverage training labs and office space.
Southeast Mesa is seeing a boom in hotel development with three hotels slated near Ellsworth and Williams Field roads and well as three others in the pre-submittal phase. Within the 350-acre SkyBridge Arizona property, a 129-room Wingate and Hawthorn Suites hotel is also set to open.
"The synergy there is going to be good for their organization from an internship standpoint and possible employment standpoint," said Will Moseley, SkyBridge Arizona's general manager.
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The city has also been itching for a full-service hotel and resort and has long eyed southeast Mesa as a potential spot for it. Mayor John Giles said tourism is a big part of Mesa's economy, and this center will make it easier to grow that.
"We will be more successful in having a robust tourism industry in Mesa and Arizona if we can offer a well-trained workforce to bring major facilities and employers to our area," he said.
Mesa's education chase
NAU is partnering with Kind Hospitality, a restaurant management organization with a specialty in airport operations. The center is expected to create a workforce pipeline to support the growth of the hospitality industry in metro Phoenix.
More than 245,000 workers in the metro Phoenix area are employed in leisure and hospitality, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is more than the number of employees who worked in the hospitality field prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The "accessibility to mobility-constrained working professionals" and future hospitality employees in need of "reskilling or upskilling" is partly why Mesa was a prime location for the center, according to NAU's news release.
The statement also said, "The center will provide cost-effective education and training solutions that best fit the needs of employees and employers."
The NAU addition to the city's education portfolio is just another step for Mesa to increase its educated workforce. Mesa has one of the lowest rates of higher education attainment in the region.
Mesa Councilmember Scott Somers, who represents the area, said this is a great opportunity and a career opportunity for residents in southeast Mesa.
"If we want to bring in a resort hotel, they need to know we have the workforce available to support that so that it's successful," Somers said. "So having NAU's program here is a way to demonstrate that and provide that."
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Reporter Maritza Dominguez covers Mesa/Gilbert and can be reached at maritza.dominguez@arizonarepublic.com or 480-271-0646. Follow her on Twitter @maritzacdom.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: NAU to open Mesa Workforce Development Center at SkyBridge Arizona
