Grand Central

Squeezed between Interstate 5 on the west, San Fernando Blvd. on the east, Allen Avenue on the north, and the LA Zoo on the south, Grand Central is a very busy confluence of highways and activity. Perhaps that is why it is such an industrial area, where you find everything from metal working companies to Home Depot. This is definitely one of the central economic engines of Glendale.

The two most famous companies that make their central headquarters here are Dreamworks Animation and Walt Disney Interactive. Dreamworks, famous for the major animated films of the last decade—such as Shrek, Shark Tale and Kung Fu Panda—has its central campus here, on a triangular block at the southeast section of the neighborhood, bordering Griffith Park. Just across the street from it are the even larger Walt Disney Interactive headquarters, containing many of the entertainment giant’s tentacles—including the ABC broadcast studio and the central administration for its theme park ride development.

The neighborhood also contains all of the other sorts of support services you would expect from a major industrial area including law offices, a post office, transportation companies and other kinds of heavy manufacturing and supplementary suppliers (like office supplies and storage areas). In fact, a census shows that one of the major employers of the city of Glendale is in the many storage facilities that dot the city. Close to 1% of the population works in storage facilities. Many of the companies are directly related to the Disney and Dreamworks studios offering film related services.

You will also find some restaurants and shops in the area, mostly catering to the local businesses and thus packed during the lunch hour, but much of the neighborhood empties out in the later hours as people hop onto the 5 north, or the 134 east to Pasadena or west to the San Fernando Valley.

The neighborhood is not only home to Glendale’s economic engine but its power plant as well. It sprawls out in the southeast corner of the neighborhood just north of the 134.

A small, older residential swath remains at the central western area of the neighborhood. It is only about a half dozen blocks of older middle class homes with well kept lawns—the kind of neighborhood that if you removed the contemporary cars you could use as a setting for a 1950’s film about a middle class Southern California family, complete with American flags; short, walkable shady lanes; and tire swings hanging from branches on front lawns.

There is a green space, Griffith Manor Park (not to be confused with the much larger space at the neigbhorhood’s southern border) but this small green space is largely unused except by delivery guys looking for a restroom or a place to have lunch; those who would like a park go south. The LA Zoo is just to south as well, so much of the traffic comes from parents taking their kids for a day of animal watching—though they rarely venture up into this industrial area.

There is a church at the northwestern border of the neighborhood, right across the street from the small green space, and along Flower Street you also find two colleges, an extension of Abraham Lincoln (a law school perhaps) and Giligia, a local business college for working adults.

Though the area is not a popular area for living, it is definitely part of what powers this Glendale’s dynamic economy.