Franklin Bakery owner Wayne Kostroski and his longtime business partner, Mark Haugen, are excited to be coming to Ventura Village, and the neighborhood is excited to have added these wonderful people to our community. Wayne raised over thirty million dollars for world hunger in the last ten years and is truly an asset not just as a businessman, but as a person in the community. AIBDC and people from Ventura Village have worked for many months to make this dream project a reality. The project will not only have a retail store on the corner of Franklin and 11th where the neighborhood worked for three years to get rid of a drug infested Super America, but will be surrounded by windows.
In Wayne and Mark's Goodfellow's Restaurant the hottest seat in the house is the table in the kitchen. Wayne will bring the same idea to Franklin with a pastry decorating area fronted by windows and an open retail area where you can smell and point at a fresh pastry coming out of the oven as the one your mouth is watering for. At the Minneapolis Planning Commission the best comment was by a commissioner insisting that there be a big awning over the side walk, to stand under and eat pastries with the snow coming down while watching the bakery workers create their magic. Now if we can get Wayne to also pipe some appropriate music outside while all this is going on, the Magic will indeed be complete. Barb Lickness should well remember the old Super America. Once after a Ventura meeting, (where we talked about that very store), she stopped to pick something up at 10:00 or 11:00 PM. She called back to Mary Watson's about how scary and full of criminals the place was, and how she now knew what we were fighting so hard for. That was her last late night visit I believe. So Barb, the first night the bakery opens come on down and I will buy you a roll and coffee. We will all stand outside under the awning and watch cake decorating and laugh about the "Bad ole days". For some reason it sounds almost "Empowering". Isn't this what Neighborhood Revitalization is all about? Even if the Mayor and the Empowerment Zone Scrooges are unhappy, we in the neighborhood feel the dream is indeed coming true. After the years of hard work, without much help from downtown, the neighborhood deserves to have this dream come true. So RT and Kim Havey should back off. We in the neighborhood know a lot better than you what we want, and are already imagining what it is going to smell and then taste like. So if you can't help, stay out of the way. Go get your own darn Bakery somewhere else, and stop trying to kill ours. If you play nice we will give you some pastries and let you take credit for the whole thing. Jim Graham, Ventura Village (Can you imagine all the extra police we are going to get with the best donuts and pastries in town) _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
