One dairy farmer in Arizonian has the best “seat” at the Super Bowl this year. Clarence Pendergast sold a portion of his dairy farm for the University of Phoenix Stadium where today’s Super Bowl XLII is being played. Pendergast negotiated the deal with one clause, he would be able to continue his small dairy. I wonder who Pendergast’s cows are rooting for today?
The University of Phoenix Stadium, site of Super Bowl XLII, sits on what used to be the 212-acre dairy of Clarence C. Pendergast Jr. When he sold off the land to make way for the stadium, the deal came with this stipulation: He could keep his home and a small dairy operation on the site. And he has, through two seasons of sold-out Arizona Cardinals football games and, on Feb. 3, through the biggest sporting event in the country.
About 500 yards from the entrance to the massive stadium, cows munch on hay and a man on a tractor tills a field. Only a tall block wall separates the working dairy from the stadium’s parking lot.
The Pendergast home, with its white brick chimney, sits adjacent to an unnamed access road that leads to the stadium’s east entrance. Stacks of hay bales, massive farm equipment, a pile of tires and crooked wooden fencing stretch out immediately behind and north of the house. As VIPs ride down 91st Avenue to enter the Gray lot for the Super Bowl, they may encounter the unmistakable aroma of dairy, and see the simple white mailbox stuck by the roadside that reads “C C Pendergast.”
The city of Glendale could have forced Pendergast out of his home and shut down the dairy his father started on that site in 1937. But the city manager, Ed Beasley, himself from an agricultural background, decided to let him be. In 2004, Pendergast agreed to lease more of his land to the city to be used for parking lots, youth sports fields and an area for major events such as the Super Bowl. The city has agreed to pay an escalating annual sum for the land. The price started at $227,266, and will near $1 million by the end of the 30-year agreement.
Pendergast’s grandfather, Charles, an Irish immigrant moving from San Francisco, came to the Phoenix area in 1878. He homesteaded in what became the town of Tolleson, about 6 miles south of the stadium. An elementary school and district in the area are named for Charles Pendergast. His son, Clarence Pendergast Sr., started the dairy and ranch in 1937. After he died in 1957, Clarence Pendergast Jr. ran the dairy in partnership with his mother. A 1960 Republic story reported the dairy had about 150 to 170 cows that needed to be milked twice daily.
The dairy, and much of the area, lived in relative isolation from suburban sprawl until the freeway brought development. A former farm field was eyed as the new home for a hockey arena. Soon afterward, the city thought the football stadium would be a nice companion piece. The city agreed to build a wall to give the Pendergasts a modicum of privacy. Beasley said workers also helped create a turf buffer between the dairy and the parking lot.