Kiger's Notebook

Fuse is lit for savvy Fuel mingles

In an image that reveals I'm in the "old men's club" and I'm not in the target group for the Fuel young professionals group, I'm thinking of the opening to the original, pre-Tom Cruise "Mission: Impossible."

A fuse is lit and the sparks streak along toward the explosive.

in less than an hour, the flame will ignite Fuel, the new Rochester Area Chamber offshoot. The info/ happy hour gather explodes at 5 p.m. at Goonie's in downtown Rochester.

Expect a crowd of up to (or beyond) 300. Expect to network closely, very closely.

Maybe I should call in my drink order now?

The House of Bounce is hopping to new spot

As usual, Ow Quit it and the ever astute Stewartville Mom beat me to the punch and figured out my tease.

Yes, the House of Bounce is on the move. Here's the news:

One Rochester business is taking a wild bounce to a new and much larger “house.”

After a few months of catering to a busy half-pint party crowd, The House of Bounce is hopping into a new space that is almost twice as large as its current one at 2535 U.S. 14 West.

“Instead of almost 10,000 (square feet), we’ll have more than 18,000,” says co-owner Ed Hiatt of the upcoming move to 6301 Bandel Road, facing U.S. 52.

The business offers a number of large inflatable bounce features for kids to jump and play on. It hosts parties as well as daily bounces.

House of Bounce owners hope to make the move June 7 to June 8 and re-open in the new House on June 9.

Expect Ed and Sue Hiatt to use that extra space for laser tag as well as an arcade. 

What about the entrance, which is pretty congested at the current space?

“It is huge,” says Ed Hiatt. “And it is totally separate from the bounce area.”

Another benefit of the Bandel Road location is that the 28-foot-high ceilings give the Hiatts a few more feet of height

A larger kitchen area will also probably mean an expanded menu of food offerings.

Hiatt expects to hire additional workers to his staff of 14.

No bluffing - River Bluff Co-Op looming

There's no denying it.

River Bluff Co-Op is one honking big pile of wood. clinging to the side of a hill overlooking the Zumbro River by Third Avenue and Elton Hills Drive in northwest Rochester.

I seem to stop and stare at it every time I roll by that way. It is massive.

It is a 50 unit senior housing complex with three levels. It is open to people 55 and older. It is a non-profit deal. Residents buys shares in the cooperative.

Sargent's Nursery sprouts up

Lots of people have big garden or landscaping projects slated for the spring.

And Sargent’s Nursery on Rochester’s north side is following the trend by grafting on additional retail and production space.

Crews started moving pottery and hard goods into a new 8,000-square-foot covered retail shopping area with a brick patio that the Sargent’s staff retrofitted out of a greenhouse during the winter.

“Our business has grown fairly steadily, so we needed more space,” says Nick Sargent. “And we believe this is the best way to keep big competitors from moving to town.”

Behind the retail area, they have created a new production greenhouse with “all sorts of funky machinery” to automate planting and watering.

‘It increased our annual production by 20 percent,” he says.

Sargent expects to have about 160 employees pass through his business this season. 

He’ll be adding one or two new seasonal jobs to cover the expanded operation.

Popular Roch. kids spot on move

Look for a popular kid-oriented business to move and expand very soon.

Still working on nailing down details, but I'll toss them on here when i do.

New massage place + N.W. Roch

It looks like the Valhalla Shopping Plaza has a new massage therapist moving in. A sign for "Swan Asian Massage" went up this week and two people were in the empty space Tuesday seemingly prepping for a business to move in.

Due to language difficulty, I handed them my card to show the business owner later.

I should have more on this soon, once I put the squeeze on my sources.  Heh. Or not.

Another Roch. pump munched

The Rochester BP Pump and Munch gas station/ C-store off of Civic Center Drive Northwest closed permanently Tuesday night. Expect work pulling out the fuel tanks as well as the long-empty coffee kiosk building to start today.

This station joins the Pump and Munches by Country Club Manor and Cub Foods as a recently closed property that will obviously will not be gas stations in the future.

Owners are still playing their hands close to the vest.  No details being release.

Chamber wants to Fuel the Roch. biz engine

OK, Brian. I finally got this written Monday. Sorry it took so long. But you know, the younger crowd does not plan as far ahead as say people as old as myself or even somebody like Eckerman. Heh.

Anyway, here's some from a piece on the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerces's new young professionals group, Fuel Rochester. Its info meeting/ Happy Hour is Thursday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Goonie's Comedy Club.

The idea behind a new young professional group called Fuel is simple:
Grow more energetic business leaders to help keep Rochester’s economic engine rolling in high gear.

Targeted for professionals between the ages of 21 and 40 — though anyone “young at heart” is welcome — the group is an offshoot of the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce.

During a 2007 strategic planning meeting in which the Rochester chamber board was brainstorming about the future, young Mayo Clinic executive Nicole Bennett Engler asked how the business group could look to the future without engaging young leaders.

“I told them the chamber is ‘kind of an old men’s club,’” she remembers. “It’s hard for young professionals to feel there is a place for them.”

Now, two years later, the chamber is launching Fuel as a way to reach those leaders like Bennett Engler, and she is the chairwoman of the committee in charge of the project.

“The community was thirsty for this,” she said.

Fuel is focused on social networking as well as professional development. The goal is “to prepare a new generation of leaders to lead with vision and passion and to refuel Rochester’s business and social climate with new energy and initiatives.”

How does that goal fit other recent youth-oriented groups like Roc Mingles and Flux?

“We will have a strong professional development/business focus …,” said Bennett Engler. “We all have our own unique niche. We want to co-exist, co-promote … and co-succeed.”

The plan is for Fuel to offer monthly happy hours, a variety of social networking and professional development events, and many large gatherings. To join, Rochester Area Chamber members will pay an additional fee.

This biz talks, doesn't suck

Here's the answer to what business is dialing in the ex-Oreck Vacuum space in southwest Rochester.

A new mobile phone and service sales center is ringing into southwest Rochester.

Jim Jech and Paul Vershure, the principals of St. Cloud, Minn.-based Core Wireless, are opening a T-Mobile Limited store in the former Oreck Vacuum space at 408 Crossroads Drive S.W., by Papa Murphy’s Take-N-Bake Pizza.

This is not a corporately-owned store, but it is branded solely with T-Mobile.

Expect it to open in late May with five on staff at first.

Why dial in a store in Rochester?

“We really believe Rochester is a great community that is being underserved from a T-Mobile perspective,” says Brian “B.K.” Kennedy, Core Wireless’ marketing manager. Oreck closed in November. 

Chinese food action + downtown Roch.

Using my highly developed journalistic sense (kind of like a Spidey Sense, but not really), I "feel" that a Chinese food eatery will soon appear at the corner of First Avenue and Fourth Street Southwest in downtown Rochester.

And the big banner draped from the eaves of the former Fastframe Gallery saying "Chinese Restaurant - Eat-In, Carry out - Coming Soon" was also a clue.

I heard last week that there might have been a change at the China Star/ ex-bus depot kitty-corner from the Fastframe spot. 

While that is unconfirmed so far, it seems a reasonable guess that the two things might be linked.

When I find out what is cooking, I'll serve it up.