Allen’s Pacific Ave. Furniture now open
Chavez brings speech therapy to ImPT, desert delites Cafe ready in Tacna
Allen’s Pacific Ave. Furniture is celebrating its grand opening at the former Oak Tree building, 3030 Pacific Ave.
Allen and Susan Newberry are also owners of Newberry’s Furniture, 7512 E. 32nd St., and Mattress Warehouse and Furniture, 248 E. 24th St.
“And they’re all different,” Susan said.
However, Allen’s is where “luxury meets value,” she noted. “They’re luxury items at really good value.”
The new store incorporates many of the same manufacturers that Oak Tree had while adding “lots more of our own,” Susan said.
“We have so many brands,” including solid wood furniture and larger pieces but also smaller ones for smaller homes, she added.
Right now, to celebrate the grand opening, Allen’s Pacific Ave. Furniture is holding drawings for special prizes. No purchase necessary. Just drop by and sign up. And, maybe while there, check out some of the furniture in stock.
The store is open every day of the week, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call 928-3440640.
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Thanks to the Institute of Manual Physical Therapy, outpatient speech-language pathology services are now available to the Yuma community. Services are provided by Lieren Chavez, a native of Yuma.
She discovered her passion for speech, language and swallowing disorders while attending the University of Arizona, where she received her bachelor’s degree. She then obtained her master’s in speech-language pathology from Arizona State University.
Chavez is licensed in the state of Arizona and has her Certificate of Clinical Competence from the
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. She is a McNeill Dysphagia Therapy Program, VitalStim and SPEAKOUT! certified clinician.
She works with various patient populations and ages who have experienced stroke, neurodegenerative disease, dementia, traumatic brain injury and postCOVID symptoms.
Treatment options address cognitive deficits, swallowing impairment, language disorders, voice impairment, motor speech disorders and fluency.
Chavez is planning on establishing an Aphasia Group to provide support for patients and their loved ones later this year.
IMPT is located at 1380 S. Castle Dome Ave., Suite 104. Please contact IMPT at 928-259-7758 to ask about an appointment.
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Tacna has a new hot dog place called Desert Delites Café, with the motto “We’re Going to the Dogs!” It’s located at 40140 E. Highway 80, next to the Post Office.
Desert Delites serves “exotic” all beef hot dogs with custom toppings and all kinds of homemade sweets.
“Our goal is to serve our community the best hot dogs in our area,” owners Ron and Dawn Bowers said.
They have many styles and toppings to choose from, including chili dogs, barbecue beef, pork dogs
biggest goals with membership is trying to make sure that we reflect what our members are looking for. Our activities are 100% of what you guys want us to do. We don’t want to be having any marketing program sales activity that doesn’t make sense for the greater of our community. And so we need the feedback. Joe’s there to kind of hear from you guys.”
Visit Yuma is also working to bring in tour and travel groups. Tour buses normally take 56 passengers on seven-day trips.
Yuma is a good stopping point for some tours.
“We’re three hours from San Diego, we’re three hours from Phoenix, that is a perfect spot for bus tours to stop in between those two, a six-hour drive,” Carney said.
“So three hours of getting here and going out to the (Territorial) Prison, doing some other activities, doing a Date Night Dinner, and then spending the night with us.”
One of the biggest successes last year was Destination America, a tour company that brought four groups to town, each with about 30 to 40 passengers,
who in total spent about $42,000 in the community.
This year, Visit Yuma is expecting 10 groups that will spend two nights, instead of one, an economic value of about $189,000.
With a renewed focus on marketing, Visit Yuma hired the marketing firm JayRay, based in Washington. The company worked on a summer campaign called Soak Up Every Minute, centered on Quartzite, Phoenix, San Diego, southern California, Mexicali and northern Mexico.
“It was all about enjoying and soaking up the sun and soaking up the water, going out on the river, going out
to lakes and really enjoying it,” Carney said.
“We know that hotels dip in the summer. I know that it can be an easy thing to say, ‘Well, it’s warm here. Who wants to come here?’ We know that there are people that want to come here. There are people that want to enjoy the outdoors here and experience Yuma, when they can afford it a little bit more because in the summer, we got lots of hotels that are open and available to sell.”
The campaign cost $64,000 and garnered 10 million online impressions, 2 million billboard impressions and 33,000 website
clicks.
“We were pretty happy with the success of the campaign,” Carney said.
The campaign was paid through funds from the federal Economic Recovery Act, with $101 million going to the Arizona Office of Tourism last year. The state agency handed out funding through the Visit Arizona Initiative Grant.
“We’ve been lucky to see some of our local organizations get some grants from them for some events,” Carney said.
Visit Yuma received $124,000 last year, and this year, it nabbed a $500,000 grant. “That’s a half a million dollars that we have to spend in the next year, marketing this community, putting it out and trying to get people to come here.”
The state will give out more grants next year, and Carney encouraged local organizations who put on events to apply for funds.
The local community got “a tiny fraction, like less than a percent of the grant that was awarded, compared to the rest of the state, and Yuma deserves more than that,” Carney said.
He invited event organizers to contact him for more information. Reach Visit Yuma at 928-783-0071.