John F. Long (17 May 1920 – 29 February 2008) was a real-estate developer, philanthropist, and late-date pioneer of the West Valley of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
He is most often remembered for being the founder and primary developer of Maryvale, an urban village spanning Phoenix and Glendale.
He is often considered the “Father of the West Valley.”[1][2][3] John Frederick Pilger was born on May 17, 1920, in Phoenix, Arizona to German immigrant parents.
Long's parents working in agriculture also resulted in the family moving frequently, leading to them live all around the state in places such as Globe and Flagstaff.
In Phoenix, Long remembers swimming in the CAP canals and playing baseball and running track in high school.
[4] Plans for Maryvale began to take shape in the 1950s, John F. Long came up with the idea of a master-planned community on the western part of the city of Phoenix.
Maryvale's influence was particularly noticeable in the West Valley and can still be seen today in communities like Sun City, Verrado, and Anthem.
[4] Long's primary market was veterans returning from, World War II, many of which had trained in the region.
[13] Marketing for the community was quite different for the time, using famous actors of that era including Pat Boone and future President Ronald Reagan.
Long saw it as a central hub for his community, an open-air mall which housed 19 stores in more than 110,000 square feet of retail space.
[17] By 1956, Long was selling more than a hundred homes a week in Maryvale, making him the third-largest homebuilder in the world at one point.
Racially restrictive real estate ordinances were in place north of Van Buren Street up until the mid-1960s.
Following the death of council member Jack Laney, Mayor Milton H. Graham, reached out to Long asking him to serve the rest of the term.
When Long started selling homes with photovoltaic cells, he offered electric cars as a possible upgrade option.
The first time he offered to donate sixty acres of land near 75th Avenue and McDowell Road in 1986 when Phoenix was considering building one in order to attract a team to the area.
He offered forty acres at 99th Avenue and Thomas Road in Avondale, only about three miles from the cardinals current home, State Farm Stadium, in Glendale.
It would have been a cooperation between numerous West Valley cities: Avondale, El Mirage, Surprise, Glendale, Youngtown, Phoenix, and Peoria.
[32] Some of Long's philanthropic ventures include donating labor and material filling potholes on more than five hundred miles of streets in West Phoenix in the 1980s,[33] as well as put up money to help the state improve the Beeline Highway in the 1990s.
Long was among the supporters and financial benefactors that helped establish ASU West, he has also given to the university's architectural and communications schools on its main campus.