2024 January InMaricopa Magazine

TOP STORIES

Homeless restaurateurs wander the city Food truck owners along John Wayne Parkway were evicted over the summer. The nomadic restaurateurs weren’t sure where to go or who exactly wanted them gone. Complaints from a property owner sparked the eviction of more than a dozen food truck operators in July. From breakfast burritos to Puerto Rican empanadas, the busy Fry’s Marketplace parking lot became a sort of culinary hub. It was a central, consistent gathering place for months, owners said. The harmony was disrupted when a dispute with the property owner led to an abrupt eviction and a crackdown by city officials that made most food trucks find other places to set up shop. By the end of the year, how- ever, a businessman stepped up with a plan for a food truck park in the Heritage District. Maricopa-based Verily Enter- prises LLC submitted paperwork toward the end of the year. Dubbed Maricopa Eats, the park would sit on the southwest corner of Honeycutt Road and Plainview Street, currently a vacant half-acre lot. It would house a dozen food trucks, picnic tables on artificial turf and a parking lot. Owner José Meza said he wants to create a “clean and safe environment” for food trucks, particularly amid recent struggles to find space to park and sell food.

InMaricopa wins first awards

MPD didn’t arrest felon who admitted to shooting Gunshots rang out on the quiet streets of Senita in July, and no one was arrested, a fact that left folks living in the neighborhood frustrated. Maricopa police responded to gunfire in a central part of town near Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway that night. When they arrived on West Cowpath Drive — a well-manicured suburban street lined with happy adobe houses — they didn’t find the gang of drive-by gunmen a witness described. Instead, they found the witness himself — 47-year-old Shawan Harris, who was armed — and a parked car spattered with bullet holes. Harris allegedly told officers he shot back at assailants, but missed his target and struck the parked car instead. “I answer back, and I’m in the wrong?” Harris said in a social media message days later. “Can we not protect our land and family?”

InMaricopa , the most-circulated magazine and most-read daily online news source in

publication that has told Maricopa’s stories for nearly two decades. “I’m very proud of our team,” Bartle said. “Winning 10 awards in our first attempt at such recognition is a testament to the talented, hardworking professionals we have serving our readers and viewers. Earning Best Website honors and having journalists, photographers and advertising professionals all win

Maricopa, took home 10 awards in nine categories as a first-time contestant in the 2023 Arizona Newspapers Association’s Better Newspapers and Excellence in Advertising contests in August. Publisher and founder Scott Bartle said taking home this many awards marks a big milestone for the

Slim Chickens’ fat first-day sales “I have a feeling we may break some records Monday,” Slim Chickens operating partner Lucas Barnett told InMaricopa prior to the restaurant’s grand opening. And by dinnertime, Barnett was proven right as the new location had the highest-grossing first day in sales in company history. Slim Chickens, a company with 180 other stores around the globe, served nearly 3,000 guests Monday, Barnett said. That’s more than 4% of Maricopa’s population. “For multiple hours, we had over 50 cars in the drive thru,” Barnett said. Barnett said over 2,500 pounds of chicken were sold. That’s more than the weight of two concert grand pianos. The Fayetteville, Ark.-based fast-food restaurant serves tenders, wings, sandwiches and salads in three dozen states and three countries.

Harris, a convicted felon, isn’t legally allowed to possess a gun. To date, Maricopa police haven’t charged him with anything — even though officers observed him commit a felony. Harris was labeled a witness — not a suspect of any crime. Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is a felony crime in Arizona punishable by two and a half years in prison. Discharging that gun on a residential road could carry more severe charges, both state and federal. Maricopa police seized the gun that night but didn’t lodge charges. Neighbors said they believe Harris owns more guns.

awards is awesome.”

Bud Light boycott

Bud Light’s controversial collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney and the ensuing nationwide boycott that started in April made its impact in Maricopa. As late as mid-August, it appeared to be in full effect as one InMaricopa story pointed out during a busy week, the Circle K on Honeycutt and Porter Roads ran out of tallboys — almost.

Viral drunk driver nabbed again Kio Thomas found herself in police custody once again when she was charged with aggravated DUI while driving with a revoked license for DUI. Thomas first caught attention when she was arrested in March 2022 on suspicion of underage DUI, and assaulting cops and firefighters, after she landed her car in a ditch. The video, which can be seen on InMaricopa’s YouTube page, garnered more than 3 million views, making it the most viewed in the history of the channel. She pleaded guilty in May that year to attempted aggravated assault on an officer in a plea bargain. In the video, Thomas is seen fighting officers, pulling away and kicking them while hollering profanities. When placed in the back of a police vehicle, Thomas tried to kick the door open.

There were still Bud Lights available but nothing else. A month later, an InMaricopa poll showed one-third of respondents wouldn’t be caught dead with a can of Bud Light. Anheuser-Busch cut ties with Alissa Heinerscheid, the marketing mind behind a $27 billion fumble in

City squandered taxpayer dollars on startup failure

In our August issue, InMaricopa looked back to 2016, when the city entered the business of offering startup loans to small businesses. Quietly, a list of nine erstwhile startups owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The city sat on its hands for years as eight of those enterprises went out of business. A feeble attempt to collect seems too little too late. When the bygone Maricopa Center for Entrepreneurship loaned its final dollar nearly seven years ago, it expected its debtors to pay back what was owed. Most never did. But, for some, it was not for lack of trying. Multiple MCE loan recipients told InMaricopa they had no way to repay what they owed.

When the debt inevitably mushroomed, they gave up. MCE launched a decade ago as an incubator for startups and a resource for existing ventures in the city. A $50,000 U.S. Department of Agricul- ture grant for rural business development and $120,000 of taxpayer funds seeded the program. Today, the city is owed more than twice the sum it loaned. When the incubator went belly-up in 2018, the roster of mostly defunct businesses owed more than $98,000 and the city was tasked with collecting the debt. But after years of inertia, that number ballooned to nearly $200,000 by 2020, according to data InMaricopa obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

market share and launched a fresh NFL campaign suiting up the classic blue cans with the Arizona Cardinals logo. But the aftermath lingered — Modelo Especial jerked away the U.S. beer crown, toasting away investors’ final consolation prize of year-over- year dominance. Some beer aisles and bar tops in Maricopa are testament to the boycott’s durability. “Across the board, we saw a dramatic boycott,” Rand Del Cotto, owner of the Raceway Bar and Grill on Papago Road, told InMaricopa . “It is insane because Bud Light used to be the best seller.”

InMaricopa.com | January 2024

January 2024 | InMaricopa.com