Your Business Week, 9/13 – 9/19
Minneapolis
Ramen Kazama is opening second location.
- The ramen restaurant, which quickly gained a strong following of ramen enthusiasts when it opened in South Minneapolis in 2015, will open #2 on Como Avenue near the University of Minnesota.
- It will replace the shuttered, and also-popular, Obento-Ya.
Dunwoody expanding with $10 million renovation.
- Plans include student housing and expansion of skilled-labor job education.
Soccer > Basketball: Chris Wright, president of the Minnesota Timberwolves, is leaving his position to become CEO of Minnesota United.
Speaking of the wolves, the team just released a neon-green “statement” to add to their new line. Karl Anthony-Townes, star and apparently sometimes-model, is showing it off here:
A healthier Target: The retail chain is adding 31 more in-store clinics through their partnership with healthcare behemoth Kaiser.
- Although not in Minnesota: All of the new clinics will be based in Southern California, where the partnership first began (on a small-scale basis) back in 2014.
- The clinics will be called “Target Clinic, care provided by Kaiser Permanente.”
- Target sold its previous clinics to CVS in 2015 for $1.9 billion.
St. Paul
An earlier bedtime for the St. Paul skyways: City officials have given the okay for skyway-connected business to close their skyway connections at midnight instead of 2am.
- This comes after a series of complaints filed by business owners about after-hours vagrants, violence, and general shenanigans throughout the system.
Goodbye, Dorothy Day. Hello, Higher Ground.
- The decades-old Dorothy Day Center, long-outdated as a homeless shelter, is being torn down to make way for a new Catholic Charities facility.
- The first stage, focused on free and cheap housing, is already complete: EMERGENCY SHELTER AND PERMANENT SUPPORTIVE HOUSING FOR MEN AND WOMEN
- The new campus will offer mental health and job placement services, among other things, for the region’s homeless population.
Metro
HealthPartners is merging with Hutchinson Health.
- The Hutchinson, Minnesota-based healthcare provided runs a hospital and clinics in southwest Minnesota.
- Hutchinson Health will maintain its name and current local-based governance.
Heart string-making med tech company NeoChord raises $10 million.
- The money will go mostly towards research.
- Heart strings, aka heartchordae tendineae, are cord-like (hence the name) tendons that connect the papillary muscles to the tricuspid valve and the mitral valve in the heart and help ease high blood pressure. The more you know.
Beyond
Apparently, all the Toys ‘R’ Us kids grew up after all: The company filed for bankruptcy on 9/18.
- This is an attempt to fix its whopping $6.6 billion debt.
- This is the second largest retail bankruptcy of all time, though Kmart is still first by a long shot.
