Streets leading to Glendale Community College were choked with traffic as people came from far and wide for the Glendale fireworks. You watched Fourth of July fireworks at GCC The Deer Valley Unified School District, which today covers northern Glendale, didn’t open its first high school in Glendale until 1980.Īpart from Interstate 17 and eventually I-10, the West Valley was without freeways until Loop 101 came to town in the late 1990s. Residents got into football before the Cardinals came to town, rooting for the Apollo Hawks, the Glendale Cardinals and other high school teams. You remember when the biggest football game in town was high schoolīack in 1970, Glendale’s population of roughly 36,000 would have filled about half of University of Phoenix Stadium. Arrowhead mall, built on the north side of Bell, opened in 1995.
Glendale annexed the area and construction of Arrowhead Ranch began by the mid-1980s. In the late 1970s, developers from Texas approached Glendale leaders with bold visions for a master-planned community on a former citrus ranch that covered about 5,000 acres. Pretty much anything north of Bell Road was (seemingly) remote desert and citrus groves - ripe for teen mischief. You remember when anything north of Bell Road was citrus groves - or the place for desert parties Metrocenter, near Interstate 17 and Peoria Avenue, was the largest mall in Arizona and cool factors included an indoor ice-skating rink and the 1989 classic “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” was filmed there. The mall perimeter was the ideal circular cruising spot to see and be seen. When Metrocenter opened in 1973, West Valley teenagers’ lives were forever changed. But locals know it as chicken park, a reminder of the chicken farm once located there. On the books, it’s Bonsall Park, near 59th Avenue and Bethany Home Road. The races would attract more than 150 balloons and crowds of about 50,000. Hot-air balloons filled the sky over the Thunderbird School of Global Management from 1974 to the 1990s when the Thunderbird Balloon Classic moved to the Glendale Municipal Airport and then out of town entirely. You watched the balloon races at Thunderbird The building has stood vacant since about 1985, and plans to turn it into a liquor distillery with a tasting area have not materialized. The iconic building had opened in 1906 as a beet-sugar factory, which is the name it goes by today. Citrus would be hauled in by train to make the grapefruit-flavored concentrate.
The brick fortress at Glendale and 52nd avenues was home to the Squirt soda factory from the 1930s to the 1980s. You remember the sweet scent of citrus on its way to becoming Squirt The colloquialism eventually fell out of fashion. For instance, a Glendale student didn’t identify as attending Isaac Imes Elementary. Glendale students would identify their school by unit number long after the unit system faded from practice. The Glendale Elementary School District has 18 schools from Glendale American to Don Mensendick.īut the district founded in 1892, along with the town, has a history of “unit” schools, or one-classroom buildings. You identify your grade school by a number, rather than a name
#1979 thunderbird balloon race upgrade#
Glendale would build the arena, and Ellman would upgrade the shopping complex, in addition to building a new one, Westgate. The face-lift that turned the area into Northern Crossing was actually part of the deal Glendale city leaders struck in 2001 with Steve Ellman, who at the time owned the Coyotes.
#1979 thunderbird balloon race movie#
But back in the day (Valley West Mall opened in the early 1970s), there was a movie theater, an arcade and enough stores to keep Glendale kids entertained.Īs for entertainment, “Eight Legged Freaks,” a 2002 sci-fi movie about monstrously sized spiders that imbibed too much toxic waste, was filmed there.īy then, the mall was called Manistee Town Center and it was struggling. The indoor mall once located at Northern and 59th avenues is today known as Northern Crossing, home to a Walmart and other strip-mall shops. View Gallery: 10 ways you know you’re a Glendale nativeĬan you claim long-timer status? Here are 10 ways you can tell that you’re a Glendale native.Glendale in the past decade or so stepped onto a larger stage as home to the NFL Cardinals and NHL Coyotes, but the ’burb due west of Phoenix has long been the West Valley’s anchor city and today has some 237,000 residents.
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