Howard Hughes Holdings has named Frank Kaminski as President of its Arizona region — and if you follow large-scale planned community development in the Valley, that’s a move worth paying attention to.
Kaminski steps into the role at a pivotal moment. Howard Hughes is the developer behind Teravalis, the massive master-planned community taking shape in the White Tank Mountain corridor near Buckeye. When fully built out, Teravalis is projected to span roughly 37,000 acres and deliver more than 100,000 homes. That’s not a typo. It’s one of the largest master-planned communities in American history, and it’s being built right here in the West Valley.
So picking the right regional president isn’t a ceremonial decision. It’s a strategic one.
Who Is Frank Kaminski?
Kaminski brings deep master-planned community experience to the role. His background includes work with some of the country’s most ambitious large-scale residential developments, and he’s known for navigating the complex layers involved in getting communities of this scale out of the ground — infrastructure sequencing, builder partnerships, entitlements, municipal coordination. The operational demands at Teravalis are enormous, and Howard Hughes needed someone who’s been around that particular kind of fire before.
What stands out to me about this hire is the timing. Teravalis recently secured major infrastructure commitments and has been advancing its early phases. Having someone in the Arizona seat who can manage both the long-term vision and the immediate execution pressures signals that Howard Hughes is moving from planning mode into build mode — at scale.
What Teravalis Means for the West Valley
Buckeye has been on my radar for several years now. Five years ago, telling a buyer to look west of the Loop 303 felt like a hard sell. Today, it’s a different conversation. Land values in that corridor have moved materially, and the pipeline of retail, employment, and infrastructure following Teravalis’s development plan is changing the calculus fast.
Teravalis is designed as a true live-work-play environment — not a subdivision with a park, but a full community with commercial districts, employment campuses, and long-range transportation infrastructure baked into the plan. Howard Hughes has pulled this off before. Their work on The Woodlands in Texas and Summerlin in Las Vegas produced communities that genuinely outperformed regional market benchmarks over time.
Here’s the basic development math that gets investors interested:
- Teravalis sits within Buckeye city limits — a municipality that has been one of the fastest-growing in the US for the past three consecutive years
- The site benefits from proximity to the Loop 303 and future freeway extensions that connect west-side workers to employment centers in Goodyear, Avondale, and eventually Tempe
- Early phase home prices are expected to target the mid-$300,000s up to the mid-$400,000s — attainable by Valley standards, especially compared to established infill areas
For context on how significant large-scale financing and infrastructure plays are in the West Valley, the $122 million financing deal that fueled The Base industrial campus in Glendale offers a useful comparison point. Capital is flowing to this part of the metro in a serious way.
What This Leadership Change Signals for Buyers and Investors
A senior appointment like this tells me a few things about where Howard Hughes is headed.
First, they’re not pulling back. When a company installs experienced regional leadership at this level, it’s not a defensive move — it’s an offensive one. They’re accelerating.
Second, the builder ecosystem around Teravalis is going to need to expand quickly. Howard Hughes structures its communities around a curated group of homebuilder partners, and as phases open up, the number of active builders on site will grow. If you’ve been watching projects coming through the Arizona Builders Alliance, Teravalis is going to show up on that radar in a significant way over the next 24 months.
Third, the land play window is narrowing. Parcels adjacent to Teravalis — in Buckeye and extending toward Tonopah — have already seen investor interest tick up. Anyone who waited to see how serious Howard Hughes was about execution now has their answer.
The Bigger Picture for Arizona’s Master-Planned Development Landscape
Arizona has a long track record with large planned communities. DC Ranch and Verrado are mature examples of what this development model produces when executed well. What’s different about Teravalis is the sheer scale and the level of institutional capital backing it.
Howard Hughes Holdings is a publicly traded company with a long game. They’re not a merchant builder chasing quarterly closings. Their model is to build communities over decades and capture appreciation across multiple real estate cycles. Placing someone of Kaminski’s caliber in the Arizona president seat is consistent with that approach — it’s a move designed for the long run.
For anyone thinking about buying in the West Valley corridor — whether as a primary residence or an investment — this leadership appointment is a meaningful signal. It says the infrastructure is real, the capital is committed, and the execution engine is staffed up.
The Buckeye market is no longer a story about potential. It’s a story that’s actively being written.
If you’re evaluating entry points in the west Valley or want to understand how Teravalis development timelines might affect surrounding property values, reach out. This is exactly the kind of market-level analysis where having eyes on the ground makes a difference.