Managing Water for a Destination Built at Scale
Bell Bank Park in Mesa, Arizona brings together sports, entertainment, and community on a scale few venues can match. Spanning 320 acres, the facility hosts everything from youth tournaments to large-scale events, drawing athletes, families, and spectators from across the region. Making that experience work day in and day out starts with infrastructure that performs, even under extreme weather conditions.
Before the first game could be played, the site needed a stormwater strategy that could handle significant regional runoff without impacting operations. Our team was brought in to lead the off-site drainage analysis and design a system that safely routes water around the facility and into existing regional drainage networks.
Designing Around the Reality of Regional Flow
The challenge was not just managing water on-site, but understanding how it moves across a much larger watershed. Our work focused on analyzing regional flow patterns and designing improvements that protect the site while maintaining the performance of surrounding systems.
Close coordination with City and County agencies, as well as the broader project team, was essential to align design with regulatory requirements and ensure seamless integration with existing infrastructure. The result is a system that works in the background, allowing the facility to operate without interruption during storm events.
Today, Bell Bank Park stands as a major destination for sports and entertainment, with a wide range of indoor and outdoor venues supporting year-round activity. Behind the scenes, a carefully designed drainage system helps keep the focus where it belongs, on the experience of the people who use it.