Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg  yahoo!  Comments

New Hispanic shopping center in Mesa

A new Spanish Colonial-style shopping center is designed to serve a heavily Hispanic area of Mesa. Mesa Ranch Plaza is on 18 acres of land at the northwest corner of Southern Avenue and Stapley Drive. It is scheduled to open early next year with two big retailers catering to Hispanic shoppers – La Curacao, a 100,000-square-foot electronics and home-appliance store, and Pro’s Ranch Market. The center will also host a clothing store for teens called Gen X, as well as Arizona’s first Pollo Campero, a fast-food chicken chain based in Guatemala. The retailers will draw from a wellspring of Latino shoppers, according to the developer, Scottsdale-based Diversified Partners. About 43 percent of the population in the immediate area is Hispanic and the median household income is $48,913 a year, according to a demographic study by Diversified. Construction started on the plaza in February.