Community
June 2022
Tucson’s Don Guerra Named Best Baker at America’s Culinary Oscars
By Dan Shalin, patch.com
TUCSON, AZ — A chef in Tucson picked up a prestigious culinary honor as a winner in the James Beard Foundation’s 2022 Restaurant and Chef Awards, presented Monday at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Don Guerra of Barrio Bread was named Outstanding Baker. Guerra is the owner and baker of the restaurant, located at 18 S. Eastbourne Ave.
On its website, Barrio Bread is described as “a true neighborhood bakery that showcases the art and science of Don Guerra’s passion for baking and his commitment to community.”
Guerra is from the Phoenix area and grew up baking with his mother and eating his nana’s tortillas, according to the website.
He previously opened a bakery called The Village Baker in Flagstaff in 1995. A few years later, he opened The Village Baker of Ashland, in Oregon. Barrio Bread began in 2009.
According to the bakery’s website, Guerra is committed to working with local farmers, chefs and other food producers to strengthen the local grain economy and grow the local food network.
In 2016, Guerra was named one of the Top Ten Bakers in America by Dessert Professionals magazine.
However, the James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards are regarded as the Oscars of the culinary industry.
The industry remains in a recovery phase after lost business during the pandemic and “still needs support,” James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach said at the ceremony, according to a news release.
The awards honor not only individual winners but also “our entire industry — and the incredible resilience, fortitude, talent, and leadership so many have shown over the past two years,” Reichenbach said.
The awards had been on a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. During that time, the awards program “underwent a full audit of its policies and procedures, continuing the work to remove bias, increase transparency and accessibility, and make the program more aligned with the Foundation’s mission and values.”
April 2022
Tucson-based Raytheon unit’s advanced naval radar systems
Tucson-based Raytheon Missiles & Defense in March 2022 was awarded a contract worth up to $3.2 billion to produce its AN/SPY-6 radar systems for the U.S. Navy. Here’s a look at how the system is deployed to defend against an array of airborne threats.
March 2022
Vail Makes Best Place to Raise A Family in the West – Top Ten!
Dwellics.com recently released their top 10 best cities to raise a family in the West… Vail took the #2 spot. Vail is filled with great families, businesses, and professionals who rally around a community’s most prized possessions – families.
Dwellics analyzed data on over 15,000 West Coast cities to compile a list of the Top 100: Best Places to Raise a Family in the West. Among the ranking factors included quality of education, community (percentage of married households with school-aged children), climate comfort (days between 50-90 degrees Fahrenheit), infrastructure (number of parks, outdoor activities, internet speeds), safety (natural disaster risks, crime), and finances (childcare costs, property prices, and cost of living).
February 2022
LA Times: Is Austin, Texas, Becoming the Next Silicon Valley?
WASHINGTON — When Tesla announced last fall that it was moving its corporate headquarters from California to Texas, officials in Sacramento seemed more surprised than concerned.
After all, Tesla was expanding its sprawling Fremont, Calif., assembly plant, which already employs thousands of people. It’s building a battery factory in the Northern California town of Lathrop.
And real estate brokers say the company is leasing more office space in Palo Alto, where its corporate headquarters had been located since 2009. Tesla was founded in nearby San Carlos in 2003.
Yet the decision by the electric vehicle pioneer’s chief executive, Elon Musk, to move Tesla’s headquarters to the Texas state capital of Austin may signal gathering clouds on the horizon of California’s economic future.
Musk, in his characteristically flamboyant style, said its Texas operations could scale up to 20,000 employees. Its Austin-area factory has the potential to produce three times as many vehicles as the Fremont facility, said Ives of Wedbush.
Over the next 18 to 24 months, Ives said, Tesla is likely to move the R&D and design operations now in Palo Alto to Austin.