Glendale Got Game

Glendale, Phoenix’s nearest neighbor to the west, might rightly be called “a late bloomer” of a city. In an otherwise uncertain national economy where some large metropolitan areas have been struggling to move forward or even maintain the status quo, Glendale’s star has been on a steady ascent, and all reports indicate it won’t be leveling off anytime soon.

Once widely dismissed as a sleepy suburb of the nearby state capital, the city of 250,000 residents has put itself squarely on the map, and is being hailed by many as a model of highly strategic—and successful—urban planning.

Underpinning Glendale’s success is the steady, thoughtful guidance of a top-notch city government with a handful of urban planning agencies that are working in tandem with one another. Operating like a well-oiled machine, all the city’s departments are bent on the same city mission, to “…improve the lives of the people we serve every day.”

What figures into the history and early development of nearly every prosperous Arizona community are the towering twin resources of water and transportation, and Glendale provides a consummate case in point.

In late 1880, William John Murphy migrated from Illinois to the then stark Arizona desert west of Phoenix, where he immediately set about building a community. To do so, he first needed water. Thus, he oversaw the construction of a 40-mile-long canal, stretching from its heading on the Salt River across the northern part of the Valley into the Agua Fria River. Five years after he broke ground, water first flowed in that canal and Glendale was born.

It wasn’t until 1891, however, that Glendale began to take shape as a town. Early on, the fledgling community plagued by drought, stalling its growth. But the population eventually started to pick up when the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix Railway began laying track through town.

The turn of the new century saw Glendale’s growth and vitality as a community began to hit its stride. With a largely agricultural economic base, the city’s crop of farmers grew melons, lettuce, cotton, hay and other products, and shipped them throughout the U.S., prompting locals to dub Glendale the “Garden City.”

Fast forward to the present, where one of Glendale’s most visible movers and shakers is Brian Friedman. Currently the executive director of the Glendale Economic Development office—and having worked in the department for the past 20 years—Friedman has occupied a major “catbird seat” when it comes to helping shape and shepherd Glendale’s ambitious goals for its successful growth.

Asked to boil down into a few words what his 11-person department is charged with, Friedman says without hesitation, “It’s business attraction in all things; it underpins nearly everything we do.”

In his view, Friedman says that one bit of serendipity in Glendale’s growth had to do with its location. “Of course, it was a primary reason the city began to grow and thrive,” he explains. “It was bound to happen. When the freeway systems went in—Loop 101 and the 202 connection, the 303—it was all being driven by commerce and industry. It was ‘foretold,’ I would say. But it’s the measure of that growth that’s the shocking part.”

Friedman offers one statistic as proof of that measure. “To give you an example, about eight years ago, we were collecting about $4 million [in annual planning and permitting revenues] on an annual basis. Today, that number has risen to around $40 million.”

In 2021, with Glendale’s brand as a dynamic and vibrant urban force strengthening, Friedman and his department commissioned an economic impact study from Applied Economics, a Phoenix-based economics consulting firm. The score card report is voluminous, with 20 or so categories measuring everything from population growth and jobs per capita to land use distribution and building permits.

Several of the results really jump off the page. One showed that as of October 2021, approximately 14.1 million square feet of nonresidential space was permitted and under construction in Glendale, largely for light industrial buildings in the Loop 303 corridor. As the report says, “This represents a 56% increase in square feet permitted in just one year…and [these projects] could support an estimated 12,000 to 16,000 new jobs in the city.”

Friedman notes that “since the report came out—right now, in fact—we have 18 million square feet of real estate under construction, which is shocking to a lot of people.”

VAI Resort, the billion-dollar vacation complex on 60 acres of Glendale real estate which is slated for completion next year, will offer more than 1,200 luxury hotel suites and rooms; a large state-of-the-art, 360-degree concert stage; 13 elevated fine dining restaurants and white sand beaches bordering an exotic water park. Anchoring the spacious resort will be a 52,000-square-foot island.

“When you bring this kind of experiential retail development together with multiple malls, restaurants, movie theaters, casinos and with [leading toy manufacturer] Mattel getting ready to open its Adventure Park near the 101, it adds up to enormous amounts of capital investment,” Friedman emphasizes. “The combination of these things all happening at once is something that I don’t think anyone anticipated, even as short a time as 10 years ago.”

This mind-boggling level of development requires an equally ambitious measure of coordination among the city’s many planning agencies that help guide it. Toward that goal, Friedman cites a newly reinforced effort among several state, regional and city agencies to help promote and populate Glendale’s existing retail locations as well as the new ones coming on-board.

“Working with the Arizona Office of Tourism and the Glendale Visitors Center, we just launched our Visit Glendale program,” Friedman notes. “With programs like this, we’re focused on creating a more coordinated, wholistic approach to using the media to attract visitors, new residents, business and organizations to the West Valley,” he adds.

“We know that, on the tourism side, it’s not just sports tourism that draws people to our city; it’s business tourism, meetings and events—it’s everything. Long-term, I think it’s going to be super beneficial that we’re all speaking the same language, that we can find a level of synergy that helps advance our individual and our collective missions. In the end it’s something that’s going to make us—and the city—all the stronger.” 

With so many large-scale developments and change occurring in Glendale and its surrounding communities over the past couple of decades, it’s reasonable to ask how that upheaval has affected local residents and small businesses in the West Valley. Has the city’s essence been forever altered?

Glendale residents Craig and Debbie Carter, owners of Awards by C&L, a full-service trophy and awards-focused enterprise located in the downtown of nearby Peoria, have had first-hand witness to the explosive growth of Glendale and its environs. As longtime small business owners in the greater Glendale vicinity, the Carters say that they have reaped the rewards of the city’s rising demographic, commercial and residential profile.

“We took over this business on June 1, 1989, and we really didn’t know what to expect from a success perspective,” Craig says. “But with the exception of 2020, when COVID hit, we’ve had substantial growth every single year we’ve been in business. We’ve always moved forward.”

The Carters are proud to have added on products and services to their budding business and, as they’ve expanded, they’ve hired additional employees, as well.

“Honestly, it’s rare that we’ve even had to advertise,” Craig explains. “We’ve grown our customer base—schools, businesses, sports teams, etc.—through our great customer service and word of mouth about it.”

But despite the explosive growth of the area, Craig and Debbie maintain that the West Valley still holds some of the hospitable charm of the small city ambiance they enjoyed in their youth.

“I’m not going to lie; a lot of it has gone over to big-box stores and giant stadiums. But if you look for it, you can still find that Glendale has a smalltown feel,” Craig notes. “Because of the work we do, we’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the community—members of the police and fire departments, for instance—and I have to say there’s still some of that neighborly, down-home vibe. Sure it’s changed, but, over time, everything changes. We’re still proud to live and work here.”