Thunderbird School of Global Management old campus

Nearly eight months after announcing plans to move to the old Thunderbird School of Global Management campus, Arizona Christian University has gained approval from council to rezone the site.

The 72-acre campus is located at 59th Avenue and Greenway Road. The current PAD, approved in 2008, allows for numerous office, retail, hotel, residential and commercial land uses. Some of those details will not change.

“The primary focus (is) on an education institution with associated services and office for a campus environment,” said Tabitha Perry, special projects executive officer. “The PAD also accounts for land uses that may or may not be associated with an education campus, such as single-family housing and/or senior-related housing, financial institutions and professional offices.”

Changes to the PAD include a maximum of 550 units for traditional multifamily and/or senior-related housing, with a maximum of 1,400 units allowed on the 72 acres.

The total units allowed for student housing are 1,400. Any multifamily units would be subtracted from that total.

“The difference is if 550 units are built for multifamily or senior, then the maximum student housing would be 850,” Perry said. “The original PAD also allowed a maximum of 250 hotel rooms, but this new PAD is only requesting 150 hotel rooms.”

One of the public speakers, Glendale Historical Society President Ron Short, pushed for ACU to preserve a number of the historical aspects of the area.

“The site of this ACU is an important historical site for the city, state and nation,” Short said. “The (Historical Society) governing board requests the city add a stipulation requiring preservation of the historical aspects of this area.”

The rezoning identifies specific existing landmarks to be preserved, including the Thunderbird Pilots Memorial, the control tower, the International Business Information Center, the Yount Building and the Thunderbird Airfield.

And ACU’s representative, Brian Greathouse of Burch & Cracchiolo, said the school is dedicated to work to maintain all the history they can.

ACU will “try to preserve as much as possible,” said Greathouse, who noted the hangar will be used as a football locker room this year, but the Thunderbird Pilots Memorial will be relocated elsewhere.

After numerous public meetings, some citizens who live in the area were still unsure about the project, even as it was approved by council, and what possible businesses could come in the future.

“I thought this was an educational facility, and what I read was this could have dry cleaning, delicatessen (and a) grocery store in this area,” local resident Gary Livingston said. “I can understand what is going on in this city, and this doesn’t follow the planned units that we were told. I don’t think this is in the best interest of our neighborhood.”

The Thunderbird School of Global Management, which became part of Arizona State University in 2014, moved to downtown Phoenix in late 2018, leaving the 140-acre campus it had called home for 71 years empty.

So, ACU cut a land deal with ASU.

The deal exchanges ACU’s current campus on Cactus Road, near 24th Street, for a portion of the former Thunderbird campus.

“I have known (ACU President Len) Munsil for some time and talked to him approximately three years ago, and he told me what he hoped to accomplish with ACU,” Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers said. “When ASU announced they were moving Thunderbird downtown, it set off a bomb in my office. ACU coming in is perfect, and Munsil is encouraging his students to get out in the community and be active and help, and I find that extremely refreshing.”

Weiers said the Christian university will be good for the entire city.

“This is not going to be a place where students will be partying and drinking,” Weiers said. “I am extremely excited for the future and I am very, very happy to vote ‘yes.’ This will help bring Glendale into the future with great things for this city.”

Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management will soon move to downtown Phoenix after operating in Glendale for 72 years.

But questions remain — along with a push to preserve portions of the site that once was a flying field to train World War II pilots — about redeveloping the 140-acre campus at 59th Avenue and Greenway Road.

The campus is surrounded by central Glendale neighborhoods that sprouted in the 1970s and 1980s; decades of big growth for the city.

Gary Richards, who lives nearby, said he doesn't mind the school moving, but he would hate to see gas stations and strip malls take the place of the campus landscaped with trees and largely low-slung tan buildings. 

RELATED: Phoenix commits $13.5 million to ASU's Thunderbird school

University campus to commercial/ residential area

ASU President Michael Crow said the site would eventually be a mix of commercial and residential development, but didn't offer specifics when the move was announced in December.

ASU plans to eventually sell the land, he said.

"We are currently working with the City of Glendale to evaluate all potential options and establish zoning that will benefit the community," an ASU spokeswoman told The Arizona Republic.

Here's how the current zoning on the campus breaks down:

• 51.7 acres of neighborhood residential along 55th Avenue and Acoma Drive.
• 40 acre campus core at the center of the property is a mix of higher-education and residential uses. 
• 24.1 acres of retail, office and residential uses along Greenway Road and 59th Avenue.
• 15.1 acres of multi-family residential uses bordering 55th Avenue and Greenway Road.
• 10.8 acres for hotel, conference center and restaurant south of Greenway Road.
• 9.4 acres for recreational uses bordering 59th Avenue and Acoma Drive.
• 5.5 acres for office uses east of 59th Avenue.

Any rezoning would need Glendale City Council approval.

Councilman Ray Malnar, who represents the area, said ASU will present its master plan to the council within two to six months.

"They're not just going to sell (the land) to a developer," Malnar said. "They want to develop it, zone it, create something that's going to be good for the city, good for the citizens, good for them."

Finding a better use?

Glendale City Manager Kevin Phelps told The Arizona Republic that he and staff are talking with ASU, but it's still early in the redevelopment process.

The land is unique, Phelps said, as it's 140 acres of contiguous land with major infrastructure already in place — a rarity in Glendale and other Valley cities.

Phelps said the land is underutilized as the small student campus it had become and that apartments and restaurants would spur far more foot-traffic. He said that he hopes some residential development will include luxury apartments to attract working Millennials to the region — a challenge among suburban cities.

Phelps also wants more high-end office space as Glendale is currently at 98 percent capacity on its Class A office space, he said.   

RL Brown, a Phoenix-area real estate researcher, said the campus is large enough to attract office tenants, despite not being right off a major freeway. The campus is about four miles south of Loop 101, and 1.5 miles from Glendale's largest private employer, Banner Thunderbird Medical Center. Brown said the site's proximity to the hospital would attract tenants and retail customers.  

"There's always a demand for auxiliary (medical) services and there's always a demand for residential services for hospital employees and those associated with it," Brown said.

The redevelopment could bolster nearby strip malls. "A new use by a competent, quality developer would probably rejuvenate the entire area," Brown said. 

Phelps said he wants the project designed in a way that makes the most sense — even if the process takes a little longer.

"If we're going to do this, let's be committed to doing it right rather than doing it quickly," Phelps said. "And let's do it in a way where everybody walks out of the process feeling really good about it."

Pleas for preservation

Ron Short, president of the Glendale Arizona Historical Society, wants to see preservation.

Before the school opened there in 1946, the site was known as Thunderbird Field No. 1. It opened in 1941 as the first U.S. Army air-training base in the Phoenix area. 

When others, such as Thunderbird Field No. 2 (now Scottsdale Airport), Luke Field (now Luke Air Force Base) and Williams Air Force Base (now Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport) opened shortly after, the Valley became one of the largest pilot-training hubs in the country.

Short has urged ASU to preserve buildings from that era, including an air traffic-control tower, pub, Founder's Hall and the one hangar that remains on the site. 

The air tower had closed in 2006 for safety reasons but reopened in 2011 after Thunderbird students raised $2.5 million to refurbish the tower with a student lounge, pub, shop and other amenities.  

"The buildings were laid out like a Thunderbird ... the mythical bird with the air-control tower as the head, Founder's Hall as the body, the dorms as the wings and the gardens as the feathers," Short said. 

Malnar is confident that key remnants of the Thunderbird campus will remain intact. 

"There's going to be some preservation — that's just got to be part of it, and I think everybody understands that," he said.

Malnar said his vote on approving a master plan will depend on support for historical preservation, particularly for the control tower and pub. That said, he acknowledged a solution would likely require compromise. 

"Not everybody is going to get what they want," Malnar said. "I doubt I'll see 100 percent of what I'd like. I have a lot of things — I'd like to see some education component — and I'd really support that. But that may or may not fit. We'll have to see how that all fits together."

Dwindling enrollment

Thunderbird's current enrollment of about 400 students is a fraction of the 1,600 students that attended the school in the 1990s.

Thunderbird spokesman Jay Thorne said the decline was due to market changes and tightened visa restrictions that came after Sept. 11 and impacted international students.

Financial woes grew as its student body shrunk. Thunderbird reported losses of $4.1 million and $6.4 million in 2012 and 2014 respectively. ASU agreed to purchase and merge the school in December 2014, taking on Thunderbird's $22 million debt.

Despite the school's financial struggles, U.S. News and World Report consistently ranks Thunderbird as a top international business school. It's currently tied for seventh best international business school.

Glendale City Councilwoman Joyce Clark said ASU's decision to move the school was inevitable, placing blame on ASU for not putting enough resources into the university. 

"ASU kind of engineered this whole scenario," Clark said. "They kept dropping programs from it until it became a shell of its former self."

Thorne said the move makes more sense, allowing students to better capitalize on other educational offerings at ASU's downtown Phoenix campus.

But it will mean change for a long-rooted area of Glendale.

Rebecca Church, who tends bar at nearby Tony's Cocktails, hopes they'll save some of the landmarks. She said she'd miss the students who would roll in after the campus pub closed at midnight.

"It was always fun," she said. 

Reach reporter Perry Vandell at or 602-444-2474. Follow him on Twitter @PerryVandell.

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