Text size: 
« January 2011 | Main | March 2011 »
It has been a quick three years.
In Feb. of 2008, I wrote about a bunch of a new fresh faces in front of the KTTC and Fox news cameras in Rochester.
And now at least two of those still fresh faces with more experience are moving on this week.
KTTC's Steph Anderson and Fox's Ali Lucia is packing it up and heading out of Rochester.
I believe today is the final one for both of them.
Congratulations on a job well done to both of you.
It might not be as historic as IBM celebrating its 100th year, but I bet this one is more tasty.
Surly Brewing has been marking its 5th anniversary with fan-appreciation parties throughout February.
While it isn't in February, the last stop of the Surly tour of Minnesota is right here in Rochester this week at BOTH Whistle Binkies north and south on Wednesday.
Surly has been posting details of these events two days prior to them happening. It looks like they plan to have its 5th anniversary beer Surly Pentagram, Moe’s Bender, Mole Smoke and Imperial Brown Eye here in Rochester.
A toast to Todd Shea of the National Weather Service for the tip on this one. It is not just tornadoes that he is good at spotting. heh.
Here's a little info from their website:
It’s been five years since we started getting Surly! Now it’s time to celebrate with not just one party, but a month of parties at some of the bars and restaurants that first gave us a chance. This is our anniversary AND your anniversary. In 2006, we put the finishing touches on a big idea. We liked beer, felt it should be brewed a certain way, and we had expectations of what defined good beer. We started Surly to do things our way, and it’s been a great five years. Thank you! Now, let’s celebrate.
We are hosting a month of fan-appreciation parties. Bars and restaurants that were our original accounts will be taking part in celebratory Surly events and offering special Surly brews such as Pentagram, Moe’s Bender, Mole’ Smoke, AHA Rally Beer and others including rare firkins like Cherry Wood Bender, Tea-Bagged Furious, and Oak-Aged Abrasive. There will be extremely limited amounts of these specialty beers at events. …There will be a rotating selection of beers at the events.
The events will also include giveaways, including bottles of Darkness, apparel and cases of beer, and special prices on Surly beer.
Here's a quick tease about the name change underway at Rochester's two Java Detour quick serve coffee drive-thrus. Look for all of the details in today's paper in my column on Page 1B. Remember every Thursday is a double Kiger day. I have a column in usual Page 2A lair as well as a column on Page 1B.
What's in a name anyhow?
That's a good question.
It's a query that many Rochester commuters are seeing on their coffee cups after driving through Rochester's two Java Detour quick-serve caffeine toll booths.
The word is that the name of the popular coffee shops will change soon, possibly yet this week.
This switch has been brewing for a while, but not much has leaked out about it.
Here's some from my column in today's paper. Check out the full piece in print:
Yo, a name very familiar to downtown Rochester is bringing the hot concept of self-serve cold treats to town.
Pat Carroll, the man behind the iconic Carroll's Corn popcorn shop frequented by crowds of downtown workers, is tapping into the resurgence of frozen yogurt in today's popular culture.
He is transforming 500-square-feet of empty space next to his popcorn shop in the Kahler Grand Hotel subway into a second business.
He hopes to open Carroll's Cup Frozen Yogurt sometime in March.
This new place will give the old yogurt shop concept a new twist.
Customers will walk into the brightly colored shop, pick up one of two sizes of cups and head directly to the five shiny stainless steel yogurt machines, Carroll explains.
Each machine will have two flavors as well as the option to create "a twist" of both.
After swirling as many flavors as they want into the cup, customers head to a topping bar with 40 choices, ranging from granola and fruit to hot fudge and Gummi bears.
The final stop for each customer is the scale, where they weigh their creation and pay the cashier.
"It is self-serve, and people can be as healthy or whatever as they want to be," says Carroll. "Our motto is, 'Mix, weigh, pay.'"
I wrote a quick piece this morning about Rochester's Home Federal Saving Bank issuing a statement about this week's reports about it being placed under closer superivision by federal regulators.
The article is in today's print edition.
Here's the full text of Home Federal's statement which was sent out last evening just as IBM's Watson was trouncing of the human contestants on Jeopardy!:
--------------
Rochester, Minn. – Feb. 16, 2011 – HMN Financial, Inc. (HMN or the Company) (Nasdaq: HMNF), the $881 million holding company for Home Federal Savings Bank (Home Federal or the Bank), today commented on the previously reported supervisory agreements between HMN and Home Federal and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
HMN president Bradley Krehbiel remarked, “The current recession has severely impacted banks across the United States, and Home Federal is not immune. Our top priorities are the sound and ethical operation of Home Federal and providing excellent customer service in the communities that we serve. Home Federal has maintained capital levels above what is required to be ‘well-capitalized’, as defined by our regulators. We are FDIC-insured and have offered banking services to our customers for more than 75 years.
“Maintaining a sound and ethical organization includes operating in compliance with bank regulations,” said Krehbiel. “The OTS has offered guidance to banks across the country as we collectively recover from the recession. I am confident that we have taken steps to build a solid future for our Bank, and we expect our agreements with the OTS will further strengthen our foundation.
“Home Federal has a long-standing commitment to helping people in our communities obtain home ownership, and we understand how current market conditions have affected our customers,” said Krehbiel. “In addition, the decline in real estate values and single-family home sales has caused commercial loan customers to also experience significant stress. As a result, the loss in business income has made it difficult for some commercial borrowers to repay their loans. To address the increase in problem loans, we have hired additional staff whose key responsibility is to work with our commercial loan customers during this period. We also conducted ongoing reviews of Home Federal’s commercial loans, enabling us to identify problems early on – before they might become major losses for our borrowers and our Bank. Lastly, we implemented policies and procedures to strengthen how we analyze new loan requests.”
Krehbiel continued, “We have a positive working relationship with our regulators and continue to take all necessary steps to comply fully with their recommendations and requirements. As part of our supervisory agreement, we will submit a capital plan to the OTS by May 31, 2011. Additionally, the Bank will continue to serve its consumer and business customer base with the financial products and services they need, and our service will not be impacted in any way.”
About HMN
HMN Financial, Inc. and Home Federal Savings Bank are headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota. The Bank operates ten full service offices in southern Minnesota located in Albert Lea, Austin, Eagan, LaCrescent, Rochester, Spring Valley and Winona and two full service offices in Iowa located in Marshalltown and Toledo. Home Federal Private Banking operates branches in Edina and Rochester, Minnesota. Home Federal Savings Bank also operates a loan origination office in Sartell, Minnesota.
With the temps climbing and old snow piles starting to melt, some folks are looking for the arrival of the first robin of spring.
After I asked readers what restaurant brands they craved to have cooking in Rochester, it seems many of you are hoping for a specific robin — Red Robin Gourmet Burgers — to swoop into the Med City.
Here's a note that fluttered into my e-mail box today:
"I was watching Food Network over the weekend and they did a segment on Red Robin. I decided to look up their menu. Oh my, why don't we have a Red Robin here?! Their menu looked great! I am heading up to Plymouth to try one of their burgers! Thanks." - Terri
I have checked with the chain based in Castle Rock, Colo., before, but Terri's note spurred me to call to see if anything has changed in the past couple of years.
The spokeswoman Jamie Winter was happy to chat, but…
"Unfortunately, I don't have any news about Red Robin opening in your area," she told me. "And I didn't see anything on the radar for 2011."
Red Robin's nesting plan for this year is to build 10 or 11 new restaurants. It already has about 450 in operation across the U.S.
In Minnesota, you can get Red Robin burgers in Apple Valley, Plymouth and Shoreview.
The majority are corporate owned and about one-third are franchises.
Despite the melting snow, it doesn't look like this Robin will be flying into Rochester this spring. Sorry, Terri.
At least the roads should be clear for your drive to Plymouth.
Remember today at 4:30 p.m., Big Blue will take the national stage as it introduces its sci-fi smart Watson computer to the world as a contestant on the Jeopardy! quiz show.
In case you missed it Friday, here's some from my piece about this latest IBM computing milestone:
Whether IBM's new computer dubbed Watson wins or loses next week as it competes on the Jeopardy! quiz show, expect to see this "science fiction smart" milestone machine move beyond playing games.
"In the future, Watson could easily become Dr. Watson and become an adviser to a doctor," says Ian Jarman, Power Systems software manager. "Because it is based on Rochester's Power 750, we can adapt and commercial that technology for other workloads. One first area like that is health care."
It won't replace human brains, but "it is much closer to emulating the human brain. This is really the first time we've come close to that," said Tim Alpers, Rochester's Power Product Manager.
Watson will take the stage with Alex Trebeck to compete head-to-head for $1 million with the best contestants in show's 28 years on the air — Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. They will compete live Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Jennings and Rutter will face 10 refrigerator-sized racks filled with 90 Power 750 servers built in Rochester. Running on a Linux operating system, it can complete about 80 trillion computer operations per second.
Watson will not be connected to the Internet and it will need to decipher puns and plays on words that are often used in Jeopardy's questions and categories.
Unlike IBM's one-of-a-kind Deep Blue computer, which played chess against chess master Gary Karpov, this human-like system is based on standard and commercially available Power 750 servers, which are manufactured as well as partially designed here.
"Watson's secret sauce is DeepQA," said Jarman.
The IBM research team has spent four years developing DeepQA to understand the complexity of how people talk. That means figuring out sarcasm, jokes and other fluid turns of phrase that children can understand, but have traditionally bewildered computer's rigid programming.
"With DeepQA, we are creating a framework where the computer can essentially make up its own rules. It is an entirely different paradigm for a system to work in," said Henry Hocraffer, IBM's Power Software program director in Rochester. "We are on the cusp of entering an area that has always been science fiction."
The Mitch is back.
After a three-year intermission with the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau, Mitch Stevenson is stepping back into the world of popcorn and previews.
Stevenson, well known for opening and managing the Chateau Theatres in northeast Rochester from 2001 to 2008, is being called back onto the lobby carpet to take back on the role he created when Rochester developer Gus Chafoulias built the 14-screen movie theatre.
He stayed with the theater when it was purchased by Midwest Theatres/ CineMagic in 2006. He left in 2008 to sell the city of Rochester as a venue for conventions and sporting events.
Following the abrupt closure of the theater at the end of January, Florida-based Paragon Theaters took ownership of the theater from CineMagic.
Now a $1 million to $1.5 million renovation is under way at the theater and when it re-opens in a few weeks, Stevenson will again be in the director’s chair at Chateau.
“We're so excited to bring Mitch on board. He originally opened this theater and he fundamentally knows what works here,” said Becky Manuel of Paragon when announcing his role. "He plays an integral role in this community, and we know he'll be an extremely valuable asset to the Paragon Chateau 14 and her patrons.”
On the other side of the movie aisle, RCVB Executive Director Brad Jones is adjusting to the end of Stevenson's run working for him.
“He is a great relationship builder. It was great while it lasted, but his true love is with the movies,” said Jones.
When Stevenson officially leaves next week, Jones said he will start working on a plan to tweak how things work at the convention bureau. Once things are shifted a bit to create more efficiency, then Jones will fill Stevenson’s position as a sales manager for the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Mitch is not the only familiar face from the Chateau’s early days that will be seen once again at the theater.
Look for the most popular dragon in Rochester – Chester the Dragon – to swoop back in to the Chateau.
Spotted some smoke signals today that might mean a new tenant is on the way for the Rochester restaurant building at 2280 Superior Drive N.W.
That's the former home of Catch 22 Bar & Grill and before that it was Leo's Pizza Palace.
Catch 22 closed abruptly in December.
So what's next for the spot that overlooks Superior Drive and the Hollywood CineMagic movie theater?
We'll see. A deal is cooking. If it pans out, it could be mean some tasty competition for some Rochester eateries.
Recent Comments