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Dangerous creatures find a cozy home in East Valley PAGE 2
Sunday, September 17, 2017
An urban vision for suburban relics
Tempe strip rebuilds as Mesa center finds hope BY GARY NELSON Tribune Contributor
NEWS ............................. 8 EV cities line up to win new Amazon headquarters
BUSINESS ................ 12 Idea turns ASU student into Mountainside Fitness CEO
SPORTS ......................16 Yoga instructor helps high school athletes excel
MUSIC ........................19 All ages perform vibrant mariachi music, folklorico dance at festival
COMMUNITY......... 10 BUSINESS.....................12 OPINION..................... 15 SPORTS........................ 16 FAITH............................ 18 CLASSIFIEDS............. 24
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fter more than a decade of disuse and decay, there are at last signs of hope that Mesa’s infamous Fiesta Village shopping center can be revived. Meanwhile in Tempe, the site of the former Lake Country Village is seeing exactly that – rebirth as an urban-style, mixed-use center where people can literally walk out their doors to work, shop or dine. Both centers were huge draws in the heyday of suburban strip malls, offering restaurants, theaters, trendy shops and convenient places to hang out with friends and family. Then, drawn by newer, bigger and even more trendy attractions, the fickle crowds went away Fiesta Village and Lake Country Village died. For Mesa, the result was spectacularly dispiriting – vacant buildings and chain-link fences at Southern Avenue and Alma School Road, one of the prime intersections in the city. The property has remained inert for a decade or more despite signs of progress elsewhere in the Fiesta District. Mesa has spent tens of millions of dollars on infrastructure in the neighborhood, spurring redevelopment of at least one old strip mall
(Gary Nelson/Special to the Tribune)
The once-thriving Fiesta Village shopping center at Alma School Road and Southern Avenue in Mesa has been vacant behind chain-link fences for about a decade.
as an employment hub. A new urban-style apartment complex now welcomes tenants a half-mile to the east on Southern Avenue. Plans are afoot to redevelop the all-but-dead
Fiesta Mall, immediately south of the old strip center. See
STRIP MALL on page 4
Eagle Scout, agencies help save housing for EV needy BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Tribune Staff Writer
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fter a year filled with hardship, the future is bright for Mesa nonprofit House of Refuge thanks to the generosity of the East Valley community and an enterprising Eagle Scout named Landon Pickering. The organization first ran into trouble last year when it – and 200 other transitional housing programs across the country – lost funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“May 2, 2016, at 7:30 a.m.,” Executive Director Nancy Marion said, noting the exact time she received the email notifying her that funding was cut off. HUD had provided funding for House of Refuge since it began operations nearly two decades ago, Marion said. The organization offers transitional housing, financial literacy training and employment services to homeless families in the Valley. The email came months after the nonprofit began its fiscal year, meaning it had already nearly exhausted its contingency fund that
Marion planned to refill using those HUD dollars. Due to loss of funding, House of Refuge had to move 59 families out of homes it administered. The nonprofit was able coordinate with local Mesa and Gilbert governments and other agencies to find housing for those families. “This community wrapped around us and started donating. We were able to move every family – 144 people in 109 days – off See
EAGLE SCOUT on page 6