Glenfield Mall

The Edmonds family was one of the first to live on Stanley Road on the west side of Glenfield. During World War I, three Edmonds boys went off to fight and only Billy returned. After the war, Bill and his wife, Jessie, bought a tract on the east side of Glenfield Road that had a view of Rangitoto. Jessie served for several years as the president of the Glenfield Country Women’s Institute in the 1920s and 1930s. The group led many of the community’s social events and provided home economics classes for young women.

In 1954, Jack Eaton, whose family lived on Peach Road across from the mall, purchased 16 acres of land from Billy Edmonds. Jack grew strawberries and raised a small herd of cow on the land. Billy continued to live on a small section of the property and could often be found outside the IGA grocery store looking for someone to listen to his tales of early Glenfield.

By 1967, there was a growing concern among locals that commercial buildings would one day line all of Glenfield Road and spread into residential areas. In response, the County of Waitemata bought land Billy Edmonds and Jack Eaton's land on the east side of Glenfield Road to erect a shopping mall. After several years of delays and construction problems, the mall opened on 8 November 1971. At the time, it was the largest commercial building on the North Shore and remains one of the oldest purpose-built malls in New Zealand.

New Zealand author, Janet Frame, who lived at 276 Glenfield Road for a time in the 1970s, called the area Blenheim in her novel, Living in the Maniototo. Of the mall, she wrote:

In Heavenfield Mall...during the school holidays there are concerts, games, circus acts, giant raffles for the children while the parents buy buy buy for cash or credit their furniture, electrical appliances, food... A consumer’s paradise enhanced, you will notice, by the aviary on the second floor where canaries and lovebirds sing, and fly in flashes of blue and yellow....

The mall has undergone several expansions and upgrades over the years, with major expansions in 1986, 1991, and 2000. The Westfield Group purchased the mall in 1996. It later sold it to Ladstone Holdings in 2015.

Cross Glenfield Road at the crosswalk.