nurfle!

A new Social Security office (how exciting!).

Here ya go. Sort of a hipper Old Navy.

For my part (and I may be speaking for a few people here), two things: 1) A large company is bringing new investment and jobs (granted, not exactly $40k/yr ones) to the GR area. Way too many companies of this caliber are not even taking a first look these days. 2) I want this development as a whole to move forward, and it ain't gonna happen with just a supermarket there. Sure, I'm not thrilled about the continued sprawl thing, but having vibrant business on that corner is better to me than the mud field that currently flanks D&W. Personally I'm curious about Chang's as a restaurant coming to my area (I live about a mile from this intersection), but their non-locality and their storied caloric largesse have put me off from being all that excited. I think I'd be just as on top of things as I am now if this were a Nordstrom store or something. All that said, what I'd really like to see is a big company announcing a presence downtown, but you take what you get.

PF Chang's seems to be full speed ahead...providing Evergreen quits blaming preexisting circumstance and fixes a storm water problem on site. On a side note, I want the job of the person who prepares PF's documents. I browsed the E-Packet earlier, and I don't understand how such a well-reputed company allows their letterhead to be associated with such sloppy writing. "Proposed use is going to be?" "Utilizes the use of?" "As well as a couple banks?" .

Yeah, even internally people just kept calling them Blodgett and Butterworth. They've gone through a few iterations since the merger; officially now they're Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital and Spectrum Health Blodgett Hospital. They want the media to use the whole name on first reference (hey, AP style now dictates a dignitary's full name and title be written on first, why not a hospital?) and prefer(?) the nomenclature above (e.g. Spectrum Blodgett) on further, but no one seems to raise a fuss when just the one-word names are used. If I'm not mistaken, they foresaw a much diminished roll for Blodgett right out of the merger gate (less room for expansion, older, yadda yadda), but thought differently of it later. The name change probably had more to do with seeing Butterworth and what's become the Medical Mile as the center of a new order than it did any bullheaded attempt to erase two generations-old brands from the local consciousness in the name of a central identity. Good on them to acknowledge it wasn't gonna stick.

I was afraid you were going to say something like that. A bit of advice, then, from a PR professional: If you are who you claim to be (I don't not believe you, but no one ever knows online), then you aren't doing dad's company any favors by opening up on us like you did. If he has a communications person, he/she would probably have an aneurysm watching you represent the company in this way. A lot of us are actually professionals in the field too, or at least in related fields. We may not be a bit unruly at times, but no one here says we're doing anything else but speculate and report what the media's saying. You don't like what you see, respectfully join the conversation; but your father's interests aren't served well by someone close to him quasi-anonymously attacking an influential group (whether we deserve it or not, there's plenty of influence on here) online where anyone can read it at any time.

Well, we are getting an Aldi across from Bostons...so, yeah.

Well, excuse my clumsy fingers and I shall excuse yours. As trongrr said: if we are so ignorant, please enlighten us instead of just trolling. Plenty of goodwill around these parts; we'd be happy to lend you some. EDIT: Fox 17 has a similar story up now, this one with BENNER (there we go!) saying he's got two more stores lined up.

PF Chang's is financed and Brenner claims construction could begin next month.

Just wondering, where would y'all put the shelters? I'm not seeing your"now is not that time."

From the 1/28 GR Planning commish minutes: So good news, bad news. PF Chang's is still involved (or was a few months ago), but they want to face the Beltline now. Who called it? Someone called it.

I think that Panera can attribute a good amount of success to having been the good kind of choosy with their franchisees. Trigo must have a mad good management team, from what I've gathered.

They've talked about it. I don't know how serious they were, though. They've also talked about some other ideas for expanding the business. I'm not sure how far I want to go into why I think they haven't--it's been pretty long since I had a front-row seat, and I have a certain, um, viewpoint that may color things, so I'm not sure it'd be fair for me to speculate beyond a guess. My guess is, though: just a lack of financing (this is a recession, after all) and more importantly a lack of time to coordinate and set things up, considering them always needing to have their eyes on the ball at the one restaurant they do have.

nah, still not enough. Rodents with little capes, maybe.

They wouldn't be shaped like metal trees, would they? If so there's one at the south entrance of Kirkhof.