Horizon wins longest game ever / P. 29
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This Week
NEWS ............................... 14 Leaders gather to lead city bond PAC.
NEIGHBORS ............... 26 Mom, daughter create Scottsdale podcast.
Local woman named 'Dog Mom' of 2019 / P. 19
Sunday, May 19, 2019
Honda dealer survived where many ran out of gas BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Progress Managing Editor
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s the area around it has transformed and other dealers have left, Western Honda Powersports continues to remind Scottsdale residents about McDowell Road’s legacy as the Motor Mile. The longtime Scottsdale motorcycle dealership — started by Scott Toyota’s Bruce Wallace and business partners in the 1960s — continues to power on at Mc-
Dowell Road and 68th Street despite a decade of economic trends that forced other dealerships to close up shop or move. Western Honda Powersports is not just scraping by, though. In fact, General Manager Jason Dearchs said the dealership is regularly named one of the largest dealers of Honda motorcycles in the country — and the business is in the process of expanding to accommodate its growth. The dealership will expand onto land next door that is currently owned by the
dealership and occupied by the remains of the Polynesian Dairy Queen building. Parts of that building’s historic A-frame will be incorporated in a development nearby following a fight by locals to save the tiki-style structure. The dealership considered incorporating the building into its expansion but that plan was not feasible, Dearchs said. The dealership did cooperate with locals to keep the building standing long enough
Historic UM Ready for big tour church faces �inancial peril
see HONDA page 6
BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Progress Managing Editor
BUSINESS ...................... 27 Celebrating 8 decades of gustatory bliss.
NEIGHBORS .........................19 BUSINESS ............................. 27 OPINION ..............................28 SPORTS ................................29 ARTS ....................................30 FOOD & DRINK................... 32 CLASSIFIEDS .......................34
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n abrupt closure announced at Scottsdale United Methodist Cooperative Preschool has left parents reeling and exposed deeper financial issues at one of Scottsdale’s oldest churches. “At the rate they are spending, the church will close in less than two years if they don’t change something,” Scottsdale United Methodist Church Pastor Ann Lyter told parents last week. They had found out days earlier that the church’s 55-year-old preschool would be closing in a week, when the school year ends.
see PRESCHOOL page 11
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Members of the North Scottsdale United Methodist Church had some fi nal rehearsals here before embarking May 24 on a 10-day choral tour throughout central Europe, where they will perform in six venues in Austria, German and Switzerland. Details: page 24. (Pablo Robles/Progress Staff Photographer)
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