The District at Tempe Marketplace is kicking it up for the Holiday Season!
It has been approximately two months since Tempe Market Place officially opened. The open-air shopping and entertainment destination sits on piece of real estate which once encompassed five landfills and had 52 different landowners. After 4 years of development, Tempe Marketplace officially opened September 28th and is currently gearing up for the holiday season. Approximately 120 stores and a gazillion restaurants make this a one stop destination to do all or most of ones holiday-shopping.
Personally, I am not a big fan of strip malls and the cookie-cutter franchise approach that include big-box stores, however, it sure beats having a nasty looking landfill to look at. In retrospect, it must have been a daunting task to redevelop 1.3 million square feet of hazardous waste land; and building a mega mall probably was the only way to generate investment and tax dollars to make it happen.
Check out this video about the project:
The City of Tempe has done a great job redeveloping this piece of land. I remember going back about 10 years ago, visting a junk yard on this parcel and I helped a friend pull a part off a junked car. This is a step in the right direction and the new mall really is a neat shopping facility.