05-20-2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Reports of Staff May 20, 2016 Page 4 of 8 year. At that time, about a dozen administrative staff, (including me!) will move to the Mounds View Center. It would be terrif ic if we could park our cars along the north side of the parking lot and walk along the path to our office.” Empire House: The company was trying to build a new building in Mounds View and decided to stop any and all negotiations on the land north of Bio Life because the land owner has many shell companies and their attorneys were busy trying to determine who actually owned the property. Once it was determined who owned the property, the land owners decided that they wanted to sit on the land in case Bio Life needed it for future parking. As a result, Empire House may be leaving Mounds View to build their new building. El Loro: They are moving in about three months. They said they have exp erienced a decline in customers and they won’t be able to recover unless they can reduce their lease and/or somehow pick up the customer base. They are e ncouraged by the new proposed apartment development at Crossroad Pointe, but they don’t believe they can hold on for another year. If the apartments had been built a year earlier, they may have been able to survive. This brings to light a common theme. Many people who I’ve talked to mention they want a better variety of restaurants in Mounds View, particularly during lunch time. However, historically they have not supported our local restaurants and they end up leaving to find a better location or close down all together. Hopefully with the new apartments getting built this will change the trend for the better. Arepa Bite: There is a new Latin American food restaurant in Mounds View. Arepa Bite opened their doors April 26, 2016. Arepa Bite is a family restaurant that offers Authentic Venezuelan food. They are open Monday – Friday 7:00 am-8:00 p.m. and Saturday from 8:00 a.m.-8 p.m. and Sunday from 9:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. www.arepabite.com. Arepa Bite is an independently owned family business and Mounds View is its first and only location. The owner, Vannessa Fazio lives in Mounds View and wanted to have a business location that was near her home where she could spend more time with her family. Vannessa said she really likes her neighborhood and the Mound View people. So what is an Arepa? According to their website, the predecessor of the arepa was a staple of the Timoto-cuicas, an Amerindian group that lived in the northern Andes of Venezuela. Other Amerindian tribes in the region, such as the Arawaks and the Caribs, widely consumed a form known as casabe made from cassava (yuca). With the colonization by the Spanish, the food that would become the arepa was diffused into the rest of the region, known then as Viceroyalty of New Granada and later became La Gran Colombia (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama) at the time of Independence.