Sahuarita says Fiesta Sahuarita drew about 12,700 visitors; town begins using Placer AI to measure economic impact

Town officials told the council that the town’s April Fiesta Sahuarita event at Animax Park drew an estimated 12,700 visitors and that the town has begun using a location‑analytics platform, Placer AI, to measure attendance, dwell time and visitor origins.

Event Supervisor Lacey Simmons said Fiesta is one of Sahuarita’s signature events and highlighted this year’s vendor and entertainment mix: 127 marketplace vendors, 50 youth entrepreneur vendors (ages 5–17), 36 food trucks, a popular free kids zone with carnival rides, a beer garden featuring two Tucson breweries, live stage performances and a concluding drone show. Simmons said the event included vendor shuttle service, QR‑coded surveys and about 50 completed feedback forms with largely positive comments; she noted some logistical challenges including securing carnival attractions on short notice and temporary staff shortages.

Alex Magalanes, economic development specialist, described how the town has begun using Placer AI to replace a manual sampling method that tended to double‑count visitors. He said Placer AI combines anonymized mobile‑device location data with aggregated census‑tract data to estimate visitor counts, origin neighborhoods, typical dwell time and household income bands. Using the tool, staff compared Fiesta 2025 with 2024 and reported several findings: visitor volume increased in 2025, average dwell time rose during peak hours, more visitors came from outside Sahuarita in 2025 (strengthening the town’s regional draw), and approximately 610 attendees visited quick‑service restaurants and about 483 visited shopping centers after the event.

Magalanes said Placer AI data are anonymized and scrubbed of device identifiers before aggregation; staff emphasized the town is not receiving personally identifiable information. Council members and residents asked about privacy and how household income is estimated; Magalanes explained the platform fuses device patterns with census‑tract demographic profiles inside a geofence around Sahuarita to produce aggregate estimates. He said the tool is used by planners, retailers and economic developers and that the town will make some Placer AI outputs available to Grow Sahuarita partners at no cost.

Mayor Tom Murphy and other council members thanked Parks and Recreation and Economic Development staff for the event and for adopting improved measurement approaches. Council members and staff said the town will continue to publicize results and use the data to support economic development and vendor outreach.