PHOENIX — A community of believers prays for the people outside the safe bubble of Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Students sit at the Christian university’s freshly painted, purple benches while talking and eating from one of the campus’s many chain restaurants.
Outside the campus, located near 27th Avenue and Camelback Road, restaurants have bars on the windows. People walk through strip malls with peeling paint and cracked asphalt. A community riddled with drugs and prostitution says they hope for better.
As both realities transpire, there is a need for improvement that unites 27th Avenue. But what “better” looks like to the community along 27th Avenue differs. Where GCU officials see a Whole Foods and solar panels, decades-long business owners see a future where they don’t have to keep weapons behind the counter.
To lessen the divide, the 27Collab pumps money and resources into the area around 27th Avenue between Indian School Road and Northern Avenue.
See ABC15's prior coverage of the 27Collab in the video player above.
The coalition of around 80 community organizations is working with GCU and the Phoenix Police Department. 27Collab hopes to reduce crime in the area and work toward “beautification and business opportunities.”
Cronkite News spent days with GCU students and leaders, police, longtime business owners and community members to learn about the different experiences of life near 27th Avenue.
‘That’s the life in the ghetto’
Daniel Son’s family has owned the United Beauty Supply store on the southwest corner of 27th Avenue and Camelback Road for a quarter of a century. Wigs and hair pieces are stacked from floor to ceiling. Behind the counter are two pairs of Son’s nunchucks.
“I’ve had to beat up so many people out here. Like, it’s unbelievable,” Son said.
Son said people trying to rob the store is a regular occurrence – at some points getting as many as 10 attempted crimes a week. The possibility of no longer having to defend his store is something he welcomes after years plagued by violence.
“(GCU) put money into it. They cleaned that up,” Son said of the area. “This is hooker row right here on 27th Avenue. There’s police out here. Everything they’re doing is making things better, not worse.”
What Son calls “hooker row,” the 27Collab hopes to transform and rebrand as the Canyon Corridor – an area with condominiums and a shopping center. When asked about the potential of getting priced out of the area, Son said it hadn’t crossed his mind as a concern.
South of Camelback Road down 27th Avenue, Phoenix crime maps show the area has moderately high to high rates of property crime and up to very high rates of “person offenses” compared to other areas around the city since the start of 2025. Person offenses include homicide, assault, kidnapping and sexual exploitation.
“I say this area is one of the worst in America,” Son said. “So as far as prices are concerned, that’s not really a concern if you’re in the worst area in America.”
GCU’s Phoenix campus opened in 1951, but after a 2008 change in leadership – and a $1.7 billion investment – the school grew from around 1,000 on-campus students to over 25,000 in 2024.
In 2023, GCU faced harsh criticism from community advocates after the university demolished the Periwinkle Mobile Home Park to expand its campus. GCU, which had owned the land since 2016, maintained its goal was to support the residents while making room for its growth.
“GCU’s expansion has benefitted the surrounding community in a myriad of ways during the past decade,” the school said in a 2022 statement about the impending closure.
‘I feel very safe and protected inside the campus’
For students like Alexis Arreguin and Jadyn Swob, GCU has created an environment that’s “very safe and protected inside,” but outside the security gates, some students say they’re told “to not necessarily walk right off campus,” according to Swob.
Arreguin said while she wouldn’t normally walk outside campus, she has friends who go out in the community near campus to “evangelize.”
“I’ve talked with some people who are on the streets before, and then I know we have a few friends who go out and evangelize,” Arreguin said. “A lot of us have a big heart for people who are living like that.”
Swob said she has had a unique look at life along 27th Avenue through where she works which provides an after-school program for children in government-funded housing. She said revitalizing the area could mean protecting the young people who live there.
“It’d be encouraging for me to just see how the kids’ lives can be impacted through some of the cleanup efforts,” Swob said. “They just have to see really hard things every day that I don’t think little kids should have to see.”
‘We’re used to seeing people getting shot … stabbed … drugged up, down around the corner’
Alex said he grew up around 27th Avenue and Camelback Road. Though the “block” is his home, the 27-year-old, whose last name Cronkite News is not using, said “it’s no longer benefiting” him.
He said growing up, every kid he knew envisioned themselves following a life of crime.
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The mentality, he said, was: “Let’s all get some guns. Let’s all get knives. Let’s all juggle drugs.”
Alex now works at Long Wong’s on 27th Avenue south of Bethany Home – a job he said he never thought he would get. He works alongside Laurencio Gayosso, who runs the restaurant. Gayosso said he just wants the restaurant to be a place for families and “nice customers.”
“This area knows my house,” Gayosso said in a mix of English and Spanish. “This looks more better – more clean. (We need) more pressure on the city for cleaning it up.”
In 2022, Phoenix put more than $4 million toward its 27th Avenue Corridor Community Safety and Crime Prevention Plan. The plan put additional resources toward the city prosecutor’s office, neighborhood services, street transportation and police. After the first year, the plan’s continued cost was around $1.6 million.
The ordinance specifically called out the “poorly managed hotels, motels and apartment complexes,” which created “an environment where crime can flourish with few impediments.”
In 2024, Phoenix police and the FBI closed the Royal Inn, a motel known for prostitution and drug trafficking. GCU and the 27Collab have counted law enforcement efforts as part of their “other recent successes along 27th Avenue.”
‘You want it to be an area where people you know feel safe’
Samuel South has been a security guard at GCU for the past year, with the hope he will eventually secure a job in law enforcement.
“We have our own private police department that’s constantly going down the streets and constantly looking in different zones,” South said. “They’re really trying to expand not just the security side of it, but also the police side of it as well.”
Crime is down 34% in the last five years in the area surrounding GCU, and violent crime is down 20% in the past two years, according to a university news release.
“Phoenix in general … I would love to see it grow, be safer, and that’s why I respect GCU so much,” South said. “I like the vision that they have.”
Rob Handy, GCU’s director of public safety, said his work with GCU and Phoenix police has emphasized the importance of unity within such large changes.
“With the city of Phoenix investing so much in 27th Avenue, with GCU investing so much specifically in the area … we really feel like we’re on the cusp of turning the corner to make good things happen here,” Handy said. “We have a world Christian view – it’s a heart of service. Our culture here on campus is built around that, and the GCU community wants to serve the broader community here in Phoenix.”
‘All of sudden they start buying everything – tearing it down’
Best Farmers Market owner Eric Abraham said he doesn’t know that GCU has the answer.
“They promised they’re going to clean the community, they’re going to do things,” Abraham said. “They do something within their space, which is they fence all the areas. Anything going on inside (is) good. But, you know, I don’t know if they’re doing anything outside.”
Abraham has owned the small store at the southeast corner of 27th Avenue and Camelback Road for over 25 years, where he has watched the community – and the market – transform. Walls that used to be blank are now covered with a mural of African women to represent the African community – his primary customers.
Abraham said he didn’t start the market expecting to be a shop specializing in African goods, but after more refugees came to the area, he filled a gap.
“The business really changed … the type of customer (changed) over the years,” Abraham said. “Now we have almost anything they need.”
Abraham said he doesn’t know what will happen to the refugee community as GCU continues to buy property along 27th Avenue, but, until a clear answer emerges, he will carry traditional African fabric patterns, pallets of flour, dry whole milk and the other goods that remind his customers of home.
“It’s a normal thing, like you grow up, you eat a kind of food, and then all of sudden you find yourself grown up,” Abraham said. “That’s when I thought, ‘We can do something and see if it’s going to be successful.’ And it is really very good.”
Abraham has tried to make the store a safe place for his customers. He said now he just hopes GCU’s improvements don’t price them out.
“When they come here, they’re happy,” Abraham said. “I don’t see what they (GCU) did for us. … People have to move away.”
‘We strongly believe that we can live out our faith right here’
GCU employees working on the 27Collab see it as a reaffirmation of the university’s importance in Phoenix.
Andrea Northup, assistant director of state and community relations, said GCU created the Five-Point Plan to support the area.
“With any transformational change in a community, you do need an anchoring institution that’s helping lead and spearhead those efforts. … It also is necessary to also have the buy-in of the community that you’re partnering with,” Northup said. “It’s not just one group that’s going to transform an area. It’s going to be just a collaboration of all those groups coming together.”
As of April 3, the 27Collab had secured 96% of the funding for new private security, potentially filling the gaps where the police are stretched thin. The additional resources are funded by 21 sponsors between Bethany Home and Osborn roads. The program will include private security patrol, a shared mobile surveillance camera trailer, towing services and night patrols.
An information packet shared with sponsors said there would be“program support to eliminate problem areas,” but did not specify who could use the services and programs.
GCU President Brian Mueller said the university seeks to “transform” the area in a way that benefits both GCU and people living nearby. Mueller also said the university has worked to provide more resources and accessible education for people living in the surrounding area.
“We’re a community that exists kind of independently, but our community does interact with the greater community,” Mueller said. “The people that have really benefited from this are the people that lived here and the immigrants that continue to move here.”
Despite the millions GCU has pushed into the community, Mueller said “gentrification is not taking place here.” Mueller said the planned Whole Foods, shown in a rendering, are “aspirational things.”
“The point is that whatever we bring here, we want it to be affordable for people, and we want it to be productive and helpful for people,” Mueller said. “We would love this neighborhood to be one where it gets known as a neighborhood where there’s a unifying thing that’s taking place and not a dividing thing that’s taking place.”
