Jesse Perry was still on the scaffolding outside Fountain View Coffee at Plaza Fountainside, working on a hummingbird mural for the town's public art program, when the owners of the newly reopened Streets of New York noticed his work and hired him on the spot to paint three more murals at their own location. That is not a metaphor for how public art is supposed to work in a small town. It is the literal sequence of events, according to Fountain Hills' own economic development director, who called it proof of "the ripple effect public art can have on local businesses and artists."
That sentence is worth sitting with if you live here, because it means the town's mural budget did something more interesting than decorate a few walls. It became a pitch a private business chose to match with its own money. If you have walked past the new artwork downtown this year and assumed it was just a beautification project, the Streets of New York commission is the piece that says otherwise.
Nine Walls, Four Artists, One Corridor
The mural rollout itself is bigger than any single piece. The town partnered with Art State Arizona, formerly the Southern Arizona Arts and Cultural Alliance, to run a national call for muralists. More than 15 artists applied. Four were selected, all based in Arizona: Jesse Perry, AnnMarie Perry, Cheri Reckers, and Anthony (Eli) Farias. Together they installed nine murals, and the placement is not random. It traces the walkable spine of downtown.
Perry's hummingbird piece near Fountain View Coffee at Plaza Fountainside was his fourth mural in town. Reckers added three desert-inspired pieces at the Plaza Fountainside entrance along El Lago Drive. Farias completed two murals at the corner of Saguaro Boulevard and Paul Nordin Drive, a dusk scene with a lizard and quail framed by prickly pear. AnnMarie Perry finished three murals along La Montana Drive, the route that leads toward the library, the River of Time Museum, and the International Dark Sky Discovery Center now under construction, with imagery that nods directly to Fountain Hills' status as an International Dark Sky Community.
The town backed this with real budget, not just a proclamation. During fiscal year 2023-2024, the Town Council dedicated $25,000 specifically to the mural program as part of its placemaking commitment, according to the town's own release. That is a modest number on a municipal balance sheet. What it bought was a documented case of one business owner deciding to spend private money to extend the same visual language onto their own storefront.
The Gallery Angle Nobody's Comparing It To
The murals are not the only place this fall where local art functions as an actual local economy rather than a backdrop. The Fountain Hills Artists' Gallery, an artist-owned cooperative of more than 30 Arizona artists at 16858 E. Avenue of the Fountains, is running a slate of fall workshops, including a pet-portrait painting class taught by artist Kelly Bowman. A cooperative gallery running paid classes is a different animal than a town-funded mural, but it points at the same underlying pattern: art in Fountain Hills increasingly pays its own way, whether through commissions, workshop fees, or festival ticket sales, rather than existing purely as civic decoration.
The Calendar That Backs Up the Theory
If the mural story is the evidence, the fall calendar is the stress test. A town does not schedule three separate large public gatherings across eight weeks unless it expects people to actually show up more than once a season. Here's what's on the books between now and mid-November:
- Ballet Under the Stars, Thursday, September 24, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at Fountain Park. Ballet Arizona performs for free on the lawn, food trucks are on site, and you can grab a charcuterie board from Graze Craze on the Avenue of the Fountains beforehand and make it a picnic.
- Oktoberfest, October 2-3, hosted by Fountain Hills Sister Cities at Centennial Circle and the adjacent Community Center. Tickets run $10 for anyone 13 and older, and Mayor Gerry Friedel performs the traditional ceremonial keg tap to open the weekend.
- The fall Fountain Festival of Fine Arts & Crafts, November 13-15, on the Avenue of the Fountains. This one has actual history behind it: the inaugural show in 1974 drew 60 artists. This year's lineup runs to nearly 500.
None of these are new inventions. What's notable is that they now sit alongside a downtown that has visibly changed since the last time most of these events ran, with new murals on the walls people walk past to get there and new storefronts that weren't open a year ago.
What's New to Eat and Drink While You're Out There
Streets of New York's return is itself a downtown story worth knowing, separate from the mural connection. The chain served Fountain Hills for 23 years before closing its local location in January 2025. It reopened this past December in the former Euro Pizza space at 12645 N Saguaro Blvd after a full remodel, and Mayor Friedel noted the return "reflects the strength of our local economy and adds to the vitality of our downtown." It's the chain's 16th Arizona location, which tells you this is a company that has a specific read on where in the Valley a pizza-and-pasta spot still works.
The town also announced the launch of Snowbird Ice Cream Co., adding a premium ice cream option to the downtown mix. And if your Saturday mornings run on routine, the Peach Market is in its fifth year at Tractor Supply Co., 17130 E. Shea Blvd, running from 8 to 11:30 a.m. through the end of September.
The Corridor You're Actually Walking Through
Put these pieces next to each other and a single line runs through all of them. The stretch from the Avenue of the Fountains through Plaza Fountainside and up La Montana Drive is being built, on purpose, as a place people pass through more than once a month rather than a strip they visit for one festival a year. The town paid for murals along that exact path. A restaurant reopening on that path decided the murals were worth extending onto its own building. A cooperative gallery on that same avenue is teaching classes to people who live here, not just selling to visitors passing through. And the three biggest gatherings of the season, from a free ballet performance to a ticketed Oktoberfest to a festival that has run since 1974, all sit within a few blocks of each other.
That is a different story than "Fountain Hills has events this fall." It is a town where the public art budget and the private business decisions next to it are reinforcing each other in a way you can actually trace, mural by mural, storefront by storefront. Whether you're grabbing a scoop at Snowbird after the farmers market or picking up a picnic box before Ballet Under the Stars, you're walking through the result of that reinforcement, not just the season's usual lineup.
If you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth, or thinking about what comes next for a property along the Avenue of the Fountains, John Rowan has spent more than 25 years reading exactly this kind of local signal across Fountain Hills and the rest of the Valley. Let's connect.
