Welcome to The Flyover. A daily digest of important, overlooked or interesting news from Minnesota.
Pharmacies with hope may fall into zoning hell
When Flipside opened at 36th & Bryant earlier this year, owners Tess and Josh Felman told the city they had plans to become a full-fledged dispensary once recreational flower sales became legal. He spoke frankly. But one provision in Minneapolis' proposed adult-use marijuana reform bill could shatter their dreams. It requires dispensaries to be located “within a commercial or industrial area of at least five contiguous acres.” Flipside is located on just 3.8 acres of business zoned land. “I knew there would be some problems with this job, and I didn’t expect this at all,” Josh told Luckett.
The five-acre rule is a 1950s law that liquor stores already comply with. But Fellman argues that these business zones need to be updated, especially in the growing area of south Minneapolis.
“I believe that the very large commercial hubs, like Uptown and the Northeast Triangle, are going to have big national companies coming in because they can afford to pay rent.” he says. “Opening up the commercial node gives small businesses like us the opportunity to operate in a smaller space.” Also, under these rules, the Northside would have no space to house a pharmacy. It also mentions that there are only three locations.
Flipside currently has a petition on its website asking the city to either drop the zoning requirement (the city of St. Paul has already chosen to do nothing) or consider granting a conditional use permit. It is published. More than 100 people have signed it so far.
“Basically what's going to happen is we're going to have a cannabis zone with about half a dozen dispensaries in a half-mile area,” Ferman said. “I don’t understand why the city would want that.”
No one wants a cryptocurrency mine in their town.
Cryptocurrency, digital money created by various financial cronies and businessmen, does not appear out of thin air. They need to be mined, and by mining I'm talking about warehouses filled with giant computers that calculate the circulation rate of fraudulent currencies through transactions/transactions. These mines place a huge burden on the environment. By 2022, Bitcoin will consume more energy than all of Argentina, and a 2024 study from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration estimates that crypto mining consumes up to 2.3% of the United States' electricity. Masu.
So why would someone want to set up a crypto mine in their town? In many cases, these companies claim to lower your bill because you end up paying tens of thousands of dollars in utility bills each month. . This logic is not the best logic, as it assumes that the provider will lower the fees after acquiring high-paying clients, rather than simply keeping the money.
So far, the lure of lower utility bills has not outweighed the disadvantages of hosting crypto mining in Minnesota. This week, Windham in southwestern Minnesota rejected an offer from Revolve Labs. The Colorado-based company estimated it would pay the city $35,000 a month in service fees, but residents were more concerned that noise pollution from the power plant would affect property values. (Revolve Lab's mine in Glencoe was found to exceed state noise standards this summer.) The Brainerd City Council said VCV Digital – Denied provisional infrastructure use permits twice in one year. A study there showed that noise would be a problem, and the city council concluded that the promised job creation would not be an “efficient use of the city's assets.”
So while Minnesota Representative/Majority Whip Tom Emmer may be a crypto ally, Minnesota is not necessarily a crypto-friendly state.
Damn! Fair State loses beer garden.
If you're a fan of Fair State Brewing Coop, you know they've had a blast this year. The cooperative-owned brewery in northeast Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February. “The simple reality is that the pandemic has dug a huge hole for us,” co-founder and CEO Evan Salley told Racket at the time. In September, after successfully resolving their debts, they announced that the future was bright. Financial projections showed sales could exceed $14 million by 2027, with a budget of $3.3 million for equipment updates.
This week, the Fair State suffered another blow. The backyard patio is gone. “We rented a beer garden space that, like our taproom, has been updated,” a member newsletter shared via Reddit explains.
Farewell, beer garden. At Racket, we would like to thank you for hosting our launch party and three B-day gatherings.
The Globe Guy from Minneapolis wins the U.S. title!
Jimmy Ronetti, owner of America's only baseball glove repair shop, was featured on NBC Nightly News last night with Lester Holt. “Gloves should be a lifetime investment,” he tells reporter Maggie Vespa. “If you buy something good and take good care of it, it will last forever.”
His South Minneapolis business, D&J Glove Repair, opened in 2022 at 37th & Minnehaha. “We just outgrew our garage a little bit,” Luckett told Luckett at the time about the transition from online to in-store.
You can watch the segment below. “NBC News was in the store for over seven hours,” Ronetti told Luckett yesterday. “It will be interesting to see how everything is edited into a two-minute segment.”
Jimmy Ronetti loves baseball and owns a business that specializes in restoring hundreds of baseball gloves.
@maggie_vespa I met a man determined to preserve the nostalgia that so many people have for gaming. pic.twitter.com/1GiOS6zlqu
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCnightlyNews) September 25, 2024
Source link
