Casas Adobes Plaza
Encyclopedia
Casas Adobes Plaza is an upscale shopping mall
Shopping mall
A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...

 located at the southwest corner of North Oracle Road and East Ina Road in Casas Adobes
Casas Adobes, Arizona
Casas Adobes is a census-designated place located in the northern metropolitan area of Tucson, Arizona . The population was 54,011 at the 2000 census...

, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

 (USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

), just northwest of Tucson.

The attempted assassination
2011 Tucson shooting
On January 8, 2011, a mass shooting occurred near Tucson, Arizona. Nineteen people were shot, six of them fatally, with one other person injured at the scene during an open meeting that U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was holding with members of her constituency in a Casas Adobes Safeway...

 of Representative Gabrielle Giffords
Gabrielle Giffords
Gabrielle Dee "Gabby" Giffords is an American politician. A Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, she has represented since 2007. She is the third woman in Arizona's history to be elected to the U.S. Congress...

, and the murder of chief judge for the U.S. District Court for Arizona
United States District Court for the District of Arizona
The United States District Court for the District of Arizona is the federal district court whose jurisdiction is the state of Arizona. Court is held in the cities of Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Yuma, and Prescott. The district was created on June 20, 1910, by 36 Stat. 557...

, John Roll on January 8, 2011 occurred just across North Oracle Road from Casas Adobes Plaza at the La Toscana Village.

History

Casas Adobes gets its name from a subdivision built by developer Silvio "Sam" Nanini in the 1950s. Casas Adobes has come refer to the entire unincorporated area of the Northwest that is north of Tucson's city limits and between the towns of Oro Valley and Marana
Maraña
Maraña is a small village in Spain in the province of León, in the Picos de Europa, close to Asturias.The major festival is August 15, the Festival of Our Lady of Riosol-External links:*Location of Maraña...

.

Along North Oracle Road, Sam Nanini would make his mark. Mr. Nanini and his wife, Giaconda, moved to Tucson in 1948 seeking to cure Mrs. Nanini's bronchial asthma. The Nanini's were immigrants from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, who first moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. Nanini immediately worked to begin an upscale shopping plaza in the remote area northwest of Tucson that today forms the heart of the Casas Adobes community. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Nanini developed three subdivisions on about 300 acres that became the heart of the Casas Adobes community and was considered by many to be Tucson's first suburb. All of the homes were built with adobe, or mud, bricks. Nanini and his son William later built the world-class Tucson National Resort and Country Club and the adjacent million-dollar home subdivision, the Tucson National Estates.

Casas Adobes Plaza was built with the same red-brown adobe brick of their Casas Adobes subdivision, and with the intent to mimic the quaint neighborhood markets of Sam Nanini's hometown in Italy, the plaza has unique character and charm. Recent renovations and expansions have accented or even improved the center's look. Home to upscale boutiques and exceptional restaurants, the plaza has remained one of the Northwest's favorite destinations.

The area has continued to add subdivisions and today nearly 60,000 people call the community of Casas Adobes home.

About

Casas Adobes Plaza, was designed by a protégé of renowned Swiss architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Josias Joesler
Josias Joesler
Josias Thomas Joesler was a Swiss-American Tucson, Arizona architect.Born in 1895 in Zurich. Joesler’s architectural legacy would come to articulate the romantic revival Tucson style of the first half of the 20th century....

in the late 1940s. The plaza features Spanish Colonial architecture, becoming a landmark of Southern Arizona. With three charming breezeways resplendent in Mediterranean vignette motifs, elegant Spanish tile roofing, abundant landscaping with native plants, cascading vines and blooms, visitors can enjoy meandering along shaded walkways, perusing shops or stopping to relax in casual seating surrounded by pristine water features accented with hand-forged Mexican lighting fixtures.
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