At the polls the year belonged to the incumbents. On February 18 Herb Drinkwater won a fourth term without a runoff, 13,796 to 5,798, and the council survived its first referendum of the decade: neighbors had petitioned its plan to widen and extend 64th Street onto the ballot, arguing that “a minimum of $10.5 MILLION, is a waste of taxpayer’s money,” and voters upheld the council by 818 votes. In March Mary Manross topped the council field.
Retail gravity began shifting in 1992, and it never shifted back. Scottsdale Fashion Square started its great expansion — the opening move in a decade-long build-out that would add anchors, a bridge over Camelback Road, and eventually the Southwest’s densest concentration of luxury brands, making it the region’s dominant mall and as much a tourist destination as the resorts it served.
Every expansion has a shadow, and this one fell on the south side. Los Arcos Mall, the 1969 shopping center that had anchored south Scottsdale, was losing anchors and customers as spending migrated north to Fashion Square and the new power centers. Through the decade the two malls traced opposite arcs, one climbing toward luxury dominance, the other emptying toward demolition and, after an arena plan voters approved and the team abandoned, eventual rebirth as SkySong in the 2000s.
The timing was no accident. Scottsdale was growing at boomtown pace again — from 130,069 people in 1990 toward the 202,705 the decade’s end would count — with the growth concentrated north, along the future Loop 101 corridor and around the Airpark’s expanding job base. Fashion Square built for the city that was arriving, not the one that was leaving. The full retail realignment, and the preservation campaign gathering force at the same moment, run through the 1990s chapter.