John S. McCain III Library and Museum

The site was a state tuberculosis sanatorium, then a derelict 22-acre parcel ASU offered up when the project had no plan and no money. On January 29, 2026, about 150 people watched shovels go into it.

Project Scope

The building runs 80,000 square feet at 200 East Curry Road, inside ASU’s Novus Innovation Corridor and a short walk from Tempe Town Lake, with Papago Park to the northeast. Budget is $187 million. SHoP Architects designed it; principal Dana Getman describes the scheme as keeping a symbiotic relationship with the desert rather than dominating it, a design premise tied directly to McCain’s wilderness-protection record. Clark Construction Group is building it in joint venture with Phoenix-based CHASSE Building Team.

Program goes well past a museum. There’s a research library holding McCain’s papers, a cafe and restaurants, a lecture hall, event and flexible gathering space, and a Maverick Forum for debates and international dialogues. Immersive exhibitions are by Local Projects. The lobby will carry a suspended Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, the aircraft type McCain flew in Vietnam. Named zones include a flight simulator recreating a carrier landing, a gallery on captivity at Hoa Lo Prison, and an interactive Straight Talk Express recreating press exchanges. A digital hologram will narrate in McCain’s own voice.

As of February 2026 the team was finishing site demolition and preparing underground utility installation, with foundations following later in the year. Completion is targeted for fall 2028.

Why It Matters

Suspending an A-4 in a lobby is a structural problem before it’s a curatorial one, and a flight simulator gallery drives MEP and acoustic requirements a conventional library never sees. Exhibit-heavy institutional work of this type puts unusual load on coordination between the GC, the exhibit fabricator and the base building trades, which is part of why the JV pairs a national builder with a local one.

It’s also one of very few non-presidential political legacy libraries built at university scale in the past decade, and it lands inside a broader ASU capital wave that includes a $200 million health building in downtown Phoenix. The north star, McCain’s navigational motif, is the institution’s logo.

Project Team & Details