Tempe Arizona Tour 2026 | Downtown, ASU, A Mountain & What's Changing

Welcome back, everybody, to Living in Arizona Now, and today we're going to show you Tempe, one of the most dynamic cities in all of Phoenix metro area, known for Arizona State University. It's got a youthful population, some nightlife, some tech companies, and it's got a great central location located conveniently nearby the airport Sky Harbor. Let's show you around. Here we are now driving southbound on Scottsdale Road. So if you saw our last video you would know we were in Scottsdale making a great tour there. But here we are approaching the Rio Salado, the Salt River. You can see the big Carvana building on the right side and that's right when you know you're getting into Tempe. So look out for that Carvana building right as you leave Scottsdale down Scottsdale Road. And here we are going under the bridge and approaching what is called The watermark. Now this is a master plan development. You can see it right along Rio Salado. This is going to be on the north side of the lake. So they got apartments. It's an eat, sleep, drink, play kind of fun area for young people who are looking to be maybe digital nomads or people who just want to live in a pleasant environment and get a lot of work done because they're happy at looking at the scenery. And of course, as you would imagine, being along the waterfront like this, there's lots of paths and places for you to run, jog, bike, or do whatever it is that you like to do up and down this Rio Salado pathway. And it actually goes much further than this. So if you're someone who wants to cycle early morning or late afternoon, especially from November until May when the weather is the best, this is a great area to be for an active lifestyle. inspiration and it's convenient to walk right you can just go downstairs and find different restaurants also here is where all the tech companies are really positioning themselves for their headquarters this is why you'll see so many high-rise buildings that are already built and that are coming anytime you get a chance to go on a bridge crossing into Tempe area more deeper into it that's a great viewpoint whether it be crossing Mill Avenue or crossing this one here at Scottsdale Road which eventually turns into Rural Road but instead of going all the way down Rural Road what we're going to do is head towards Arizona State University and explore around there and you just simply make a right right after the bridge you'll know you're in Tempe and not Scottsdale anymore once you see Rural that's the name of the road so from here you'll see more high-rise buildings from tech companies and other corporations so you can see they've really built this up into a waterfront experience all the buildings are new and modern they have a light rail tram and plenty of apartments and condos all up and down here all new stuff some people work in these buildings but I really find it to be convenient that they've built the light rail. Hopefully more people continue to use that light rail and we can encourage more rail networks and development in the state of Arizona. I'm a big proponent for the idea that we should build a high-speed train that connects Tucson and Phoenix because that would be just such a fast, efficient way to get around. And you can even live in Phoenix and work in Tucson or vice versa if we did get something like that. For now, we have the light rail, and that works just about fine, getting around Tempe. This can even take you to downtown if you want it. But here we are at the stadium. Let's go up to A Mountain. In case you're wondering, the A simply represents Arizona State University, or Arizona. But the real name of this butte here is called the Hayden Butte. And at the base of the mountain is the old mill. So that's why it's called Mill Avenue, because of this here mill. They don't know what they're going to do with it. It should be a museum, if anything, but they keep it standing. They haven't torn it down. It is some primetime real estate, though, but they keep it there for historical reasons. After all, it is called Mill Avenue and we just call it a mountain. It stands about 1500 feet above elevation, so it rises right above the actual Salt River, which is now the Rio Salado. Rio Salado in Spanish means Salt River. So it's just the Spanish name for it in case you were curious about that as well. Here you get great views though of the university. You can hike up here in the morning time. You can do it three times a week. You can do it once a year. It's up to you. A couple things that I personally like to do up here is look at all the new development that's taking place once I get up there so I can get a good and get a real good view up above here. Well, instead of what I see at the ground level when I'm driving around or biking, but also you get some planes that arrive into Sky Harbor and you can get some nice photos and some videos of those planes coming into Sky Harbor which is one of the best airports in the country by the way i do have some good news about the hike though it only takes about 20 to 40 minutes round trip depending on how fast you are so it's not like it's a big effort to get up here it's pretty easy hike to the summit 10 to 20 minutes just depending on how fast you want to go or if you're in shape or not The descent maybe takes five to 15 minutes. Again, how fast are you going? As far as difficulty, it's easy to moderate with some steep sections, but most people who are at the university don't have problems going up and down this one. The trail length itself is about 0.5 to 0.6 miles round trip You're gaining an elevation probably, two to three hundred feet, for those of you who are keeping score at home. Actually, now's a perfect opportunity to share some important details. Tempe was founded in 1871 and incorporated in 1894. The current population is about 180,000 as of 2020's U.S. census. I would say it went up about 10,000 since then, so we're probably sitting at around 190,000 people. It is located in Maricopa County, for those of you who are wondering about voting. And from up here on Hayden Butte, you can see everything off in the distance, including Sky Harbor Airport, downtown Phoenix, and actually if you look down at Rio Salado or Tempe Town Lake, as we call it, you can also see that there used to be a river before it was a lake, right? And there was a ferry that went across that river, it was called the Hayden Ferry, named after Charles Turnbull Hayden, who was an early settler of Tempe. He's the one who operated the ferry across. You have to remember, 100 years ago, Tempe used to look a lot different than this because a nice, mighty river used to flow right through here, unobstructed, before they built all the dams. And as we're walking around Mill Avenue here, you can see the Tempe Municipal Building, also known as Tempe Town Hall. This is where all the big decisions are made. But you can see they've got this old and new infrastructure. A lot of the older buildings here are historical relics because of the old architect named Frank Lloyd Wright. Yes, the same guy that Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard in Scottsdale is named after. He's a famous architect who was all across the United States, but he left his fingerprint here in the area around Tempe and across Phoenix Metro and Scottsdale. For the last 10 years or so, every time I come down to Tempe, there's cranes and new construction projects building new high-rises, whether it be hotels, apartments, or even office space. It's quite amazing to see how Tempe is really just rising and just becoming an economic powerhouse. That's the thing that we have to talk about more about Phoenix, Arizona, is how it is one of the leading tech corridors in the entire country. And, you know, everyone thinks, oh, Austin or Silicon Valley. Well, guess what? Phoenix is actually becoming one of those corridors that could eventually become number one. We've got Waymo cars out here training for the last 10 years. We've got a lot of tech being built here. TSMC builds their factories out here. And a lot of that power that comes from those factories ends up here in a place like Tempe. Not so much in downtown. Downtown Phoenix used to be the go-to spot. It seems like this area is where they're getting the youthful talent and innovation because Arizona State, just like its brother down in Tucson, University of Arizona Wildcats, is getting lots of talent coming in here for education reasons. And what better to do with all that talent than teach them about the emerging technologies of the future? And Taiwan Semi and some of these other Lucid Motors and stuff are really big players. on the global stage and it's so cool to see Phoenix being home to some of these major corporations hey look right there there goes a Waymo which is a driverless vehicle i've actually driven in those you can just download the app and start using it it's really convenient for getting around in short distances it's actually a better savings than even using Uber but also as we're going around you can see people are riding scooters bikes lots of young people and lots of accommodation for those young people to live right here Eat, sleep, work, play. That's kind of the vibe here is getting everyone to live a very active lifestyle within the city and inside the university and just be healthy, active, right? That's the big key here is having an active lifestyle. If you're bored or uninspired on a hot day or a cold day, whatever it is, you know, you're just not going to be very physically fit or healthy. And so you're not going to be able to think clearly. So we want to be healthy and Arizona State University building this infrastructure. To make it more of an active lifestyle type university. Now, most people would say that Mill Avenue is the nightlife capital of Tempe or even one of the top three nightlife areas in Phoenix. We can make a video all about that. We talk about Old Town, Skysail, downtown Phoenix, what's going on out in the west side, but also Tempe. I mean, I would say this is top three, but you can't sleep on Chandler and Gilbert. Let us know if you guys want those videos also because they got some cool downtown areas. But yeah, this is really a Nightlife area, we didn't film it at night, but you get the idea. I mean, just imagine a bunch of people out walking with all of the, you know, nightclubs and bars and saloons and restaurants fully lit up. In fact if I was someone who was thinking about moving to Tempe or maybe even being a college student here I would definitely want to get one of those condos right along the water of the Tempe lake and I'd want to get myself a bicycle so I can ride my bike in all directions even go up to the Scottsdale Greenbelt you know do a couple miles or 10 miles who knows how far you want to go but yeah get a bike get a condo and then you know Download that Waymo app and be ready to just live a chill life, make some friends down here, go out on Tempe. That's how I do it. But also, we've got more hikes to show you. So there's so many different hikes right here because you're essentially located in Tempe. You can easily go up to South Mountain, going over to Papago, Papago Park. You know, there's a lot to see up in there. I mean, that's an amazing rock formation with great Great views at the Hole in the Wall. They also have the zoo there. So you can get involved in any of those kind of activities. But here we are crossing Mill Avenue. I would say the drive's a little bit more interesting if you're coming into Tempe, but in this case we're leaving the Tempe downtown area. We're going across the river and we're going to explore some of the walking paths and just the places that you can do your recreation. By the way, even in the winter time or in the fall or spring months, they actually let you get a sailboat and go out on that lake. So lots of fun things you can do I think, but The big thing is, hey, if you ever wanted to learn sailing, you can learn right there on Tempe Town Lake, and then you can take your talents and skills out onto one of the bigger lakes up the stream, because after all, this is part of the Salt River Project. And in case you didn't know, all of those lakes up above the Salt River where we're at now, there's several different dams, right? And then as you go up to Saguaro Lake, Canyon Lake, Apache Lake, Roosevelt Lake, they're They're all a part of a... water system that is how you turn on the faucet in the desert here in Phoenix and that's all because of this Salt River Project which ultimately ends here at the Tempe Town Lake but look how exciting it is to ride your bike around here and see all the things at the ground level i mean you never know what you'll see down here i do know that there are some remnants of an old Hohokam civilization so Hohokam people used to be here They were the original settlers of this area known as Valley of the Sun, which is Phoenix, Arizona. After all, the reason they call it Phoenix anyway is because it's an old civilization that rose from the ashes, just like an old Phoenix bird would do, right? It rises from the ashes of the old and turns into the new. But that's who the Hohokam people were, the original settlers, and they were right here along this river. Amazing. But remember how I was telling you, you never know what you'd come across. Look at how they have these dams and they have to release the water at times for flood control. Okay, obviously lately in this Autumn months, we've been getting a lot of rain in Phoenix, flooding, and that just filled up all the reservoirs, including Tempe Lake, and they've actually got to let some of that water flow down. By the way, if you followed this river a little bit further, you'd end up where three rivers meet. You have the Agua Fria River, which used to meet here, all dried up. You also have the Gila River, which would meet right here. So, very interesting history to pick up on. But that would happen over in Buckeye. That's where the three rivers converge. And then it continues there past Gila Bend, which is eventually the Rio Salado. The Salt River turns into the Gila River at some point. If they ever let the dams break and flow fully, it would end up all the way into the Colorado River, which would dump into the Sea of Cortez. In the Baja, Mexico, but as you can see, we're out here in Papago. You can see the Hunt Tomb. That's that white pyramid up on the actual mountain there. He was the first original governor of Arizona. But here we are going up to the hole in the rock hole in the wall. Depends on how people want to call it. But either way, from here you get a great view looking down at downtown Phoenix. So it's cool because you can see some of the planes coming into Sky Harbor. You can see. at sunset just beautiful colors because after all this area is known for some of the best sunsets you'll find anywhere in the country and this is another one of those really easy hikes i mean it takes three to five minutes to get up and then you know two minutes to get down it is a little bit slippery but the view is worth it i mean the best time to come here is going to be early morning or late afternoon i would say at sunset on a weekend probably going to be a lot of people That maybe if you come during the weekdays, won't be so many people a small space a lot of people are you know competing for the best view that they can get so now what we're going to do is we're actually going to head over to Tempe Marketplace and Arizona Mills but along the way we're going to show you around a bit so on this drive from Papago to Tempe Town Lake takes about 10 minute drive and on the south side you will see the Mountain America Stadium also known as Sun Devil Stadium And then once we actually get to the Tempe Marketplace, let me give you some facts. It's one of the largest outdoor shopping and entertainment districts in Tempe and here in Arizona. It's located near Loop 101 and Loop 202. It's a popular gathering place for shopping, dining, movies, and nightlife. Originally opened in 2007, it is built on a former industrial site. So they took this old land and they turned it into an entertainment area. And the cool thing about the entertainment center here is it's family friendly, whereas maybe Mill Avenue might be for younger college kids. This one here is for families. So that's the great news. And you've got Mod Pizza. You've got so many different restaurants here. You can get all different types of cuisine as well. You can get Asian fusion, Mexican food, steakhouses, fresh seafood, they got that all here. And another area that I want to show you around here which is an old big mall originally built in the early 2000s, this is called Arizona Mills. Unlike some of the other malls around Phoenix Metro like Metro Center, Paradise Valley, or even Superstition Springs all getting torn down, this one here has withstood the test of time. It is a newer mall. In fact, I can't really think of the last time Phoenix built a big mega mall like Arizona Mills. But I will say as you saw in our last video, Scottsdale Fashion Square is still the largest of them all and they've been doing renovations and modernizing it. But I feel like Arizona Mills is the major indoor outlet mall originally opened in 1997. I know I said early 2000s but it's really got some interesting features here and attractions like Legoland Discovery Center, the IMAX theater. It is conveniently located right in the heart of the neighborhoods of Tempe right off the freeway there so you get some convenience right there compared to Tempe Marketplace which is more or less off the 202 this one's closer to the I-10 in Ahwatukee but now i want to show you guys that Scottsdale video so click right here see you on the next one