News from the northside

In June I had some posts about the new Verizon store on South College. At the time there were no plans to close the existing store on North McKinley Street. Those plans must have changed quite quickly because the old store closed on August 28. (I guess this is not news--it is more like history. Sorry--I have not been out that way for a while.) I stopped by the South College store on Monday and asked why they had closed this one. They said it was all about location--a lot more people were using the new store than were using the old one.

 Across the street and a bit to the north a new occupant has been found for the old feed mill building that previously housed the Healthy Families office. The photographer going in here was previously above J&L Antiques and Furniture, which is in its last days of its liquidation sale.

 Further north on McKinley, just south of the Moose Hall and across the street from the Farm Bureau Store, a new cafe will soon open in the building that was until recently Whippersnaps Photography.

 It will be a morning cafe, serving breakfast and lunch, rather than a evening restaurant, serving lunch and dinner. The sign says that it will be open from 6:00 am until 2:00 pm and that it will be opening soon.

One other change that I think is pretty much common knowledge. Tom and Irene from Harvey's Copy Shop and Irene's Consignments will be retiring in a couple months. I was in a week ago to fax some papers and Tom told me that the copy shop business will cease on December 1, though similar services are available at Heritage Office Supply. (Maybe that is a business opportunity for someone.) The framing business will be continued by Kem's, and the consignment shop will continues but with a new name and a new owner.

When I was in the library skimming old issues of Vintage Views a month ago, I found an article on the Gerhing Farm in the Fall/Winter 2009 issue. It had a picture of an old ad for forklifts and noted that it was the first ad of its kind with a female forklift driver. That driver was Irene, who worked for the Gerhing Farm for 18 years until it closed. After it closed, she worked a number of years at Saint Joseph's College in the copy center, which is where I got to know her.

If you know more about any of these changes, feel free to share your information in the comments. (Or if I made a mistake, you can use the comments to correct me.)