Grand Canyon U is growing:

The Phoenix-based for-profit school plans to open a $150 million campus in Mesa near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and ASU’s Polytechnic campus. Classes will begin in 2015.

Phoenix-based for-profit Grand Canyon University will open a $150 million campus in Mesa at a time when enrollment at many higher-education institutions is declining. Class- es are to begin in fall 2015.

Grand Canyon officials on Tuesday announced a deal with developer DMB Associates to acquire at least 100 acres at Ray and Ellsworth roads, near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus.

Grand Canyon plans to have 7,500 to 10,000 students at the satellite campus, Chief Executive Officer Brian Mueller said.

Students at the Mesa campus will have access to all of the university’s programs and services on opening day, and the university has plans to add technology and engineering programs, Mueller said. Dormitories will not be built in the initial phase but might come later, he said.

Grand Canyon revealed its expansion plans in December while inviting several southeast Valley cities to submit pro-

posals, possibly including incentive packages, to land the satellite campus.

Mesa’s Eastmark community won over two sites in Gilbert’s SanTan Village mall area and another site in Mesa, Mueller said. University leaders liked the Eastmark site’s proximity to freeways and the opportunity to build in a master-planned community that is just getting started, he said.

The expansion comes as the market for higher education nationwide is contracting, according to analysts.

The recently reported that college enrollment fell 2 percent in 2012-13, the first significant decline since the 1990s. Nearly all of that drop hit for-profit and community colleges. The reported that signs now point to 2013-14 being the year when traditional four-year, non-profit colleges begin a contraction that will last for several years.

In January, the Associated Press reported that Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its outlook for the higher-education sector to negative across the board.

Grand Canyon did not receive any economic incentives from Mesa or DMB but purchased the land at a price that was “more than fair,” Mueller said. University and DMB officials declined to discuss the purchase price more specifically.

The first phase will include a student union, a library, a fitness center, dining, classrooms and laboratories, Mueller said. Grand Canyon expects to break ground by January, he said.

Buses will ferry students from the Mesa campus about 40 miles to the main campus in west Phoenix for events like basketball games, concerts and plays, Mueller said.

The university will relocate administrative offices from Tempe to the Eastmark campus, with about 750 employees moving into a 100,000-square-foot office building.

Eastmark is about 27 miles from Grand Canyon’s existing offices in Tempe, but Mueller said employees will have roughly two years to consider moving closer to their new workplace. Many workers already live in Chandler, Gilbert and Mesa and are excited about the new campus, he said.

Much of the land in and around Eastmark — built on the old General Motors Desert Proving Ground — still is undeveloped, but DMB President Charley Freericks said the company expects commercial development to accelerate with this announcement.

The developer envisions a grocery store, restaurants, medical offices and services, such as copying and dry cleaning, to spring up around the university.

Education is seen as a core element of the Eastmark mixeduse project, Freericks said. Basis charter school is preparing to open an Eastmark campus this year, and DMBisworking to bring a second charter school to the community, Freericks said.

The Grand Canyon campus will be just 5 miles from ASU Polytechnic. ASU President Michael Crow on Tuesday said he wishes GCU “great success” with its new campus.

“Arizona has an insufficiently built higher-education infrastructure and is not served by a broad enough mix of institutions,” Crow said in a statement. “The addition of new parochial college options is important.”

Classes are to begin at the new campus in fall 2015, but Grand Canyon is looking for space at an area church to begin establishing a presence with classes in fall 2014, Mueller said.

Grand Canyon was founded as a private, Christian school in 1949 by the Southern Baptist Church. The school fell on hard times financially in the early 2000s and was bought by a private company that went public and began trading shares on the stock exchange in 2008.

Since converting its business model, the university has seen explosive growth because of an aggressive expansion of online courses.

Enrollment at Grand Canyon is about 51,200, an increase of 15 percent from one year ago, university officials told investors on Tuesday. The school expects “ground enrollment” to reach 8,500 students this fall.

Accordingly, Grand Canyon also has seen its annual earnings climb dramatically, up 33 percent since 2010, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

The company’s net revenue reached $511 million in 2012, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. Earnings per share increased to $1.57 from $1.13.

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith said he encouraged Grand Canyon and DMB Associates to talk after the university announced it wanted to expand.

For about the past four years, Smith has spearheaded a nationally recognized effort to retrofit Mesa with private liberalarts colleges, which is paying off this summer as five old-line schools from the East and Midwest open campuses in Mesa.

He does not believe that the Grand Canyon-Eastmark deal, which came together without direct city involvement, will undermine that effort.

“I said very early and very often that we want to expand educational opportunities,” Smith said. With five colleges now opening campuses, “we’re not recruiting any colleges to Mesa. We want to give our universities that are coming to downtown a foothold.”

But since Grand Canyon had announced plans to come to the southeast Valley, Smith said he welcomes the new campus, which is more than 15 miles from the downtown liberal-arts education hub Mesa is establishing.

“It’s myjob as mayor to try to figure out what’s best for Mesa, what’s best for the East Valley,” Smith said. “I feel very good about it, very excited about the potential.”