By Catherine Reagor | Arizona Republic
Metrocenter with its ice skating rink, big department stores, airline-themed restaurant and Orange Julius was the place to be in Valley during the late 1970s and 1980s.
Parts of the movie “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” were filmed at the popular mall.
But the northwest Phoenix development once hailed as the future of shopping with five major department stores, hit hard times in the late 1990s as people fled to suburbs and newer shopping centers in Scottsdale, north Glendale, northeast Phoenix, Tempe and Chandler.
The real estate crash of 2008-2011 left the mall, west of Interstate 17 between Peoria and Dunlap avenues, with a flood of vacant stores and foreclosed homes in the neighborhoods around it.
