If you are an HGTV watcher (and I am!) you know that the Doory Awards are considered the Ultimate House Hunt:

Each week, the Front Door editors select the schmanciest (a real word) homes and YOU get to vote on them.

Why am I telling you this? OMG, because a condo — designed by Tanek — the one that I covet in my dreams (and waking hours) — has been nominated!

Hold your applause until the end: business first — cast your vote today!

Situated between Eat Street and MCAD is grey building.

In its 111 years of life, it has seen all sorts of tenants — too sordid to get into on this G-rated blog (an auto dealership? Some business that required a liquor permit?? …But I’ve said too much) —  No more! The Tanek Landlords have fostered a renaissance:

Spydertrap, Tanek, Light Grey Art Lab… Light Grey Art Lab had a Grand Opening the other night and this voyeuristic footage was sent to me by the Whittier paparazzi:

In a category called, The Community Builders, Mpls St Paul Mag digs into (and digests) the Blue Plate Restaurant Company. It seems like a Tanek trend — working with companies that insert themselves into, and embrace, their communities.

With some help from Tanek, Blue Plate reinvents themselves for each neighborhood — Three Squares feels like Maple Grove, The Lowry feels like Uptown — seven restaurants in all and all somehow taste like the neighborhood they’re in.

Amazing/delicious.

Read what Mpls St Paul Mag has to say:

It’s happening, folks! Remember when I said Richfield looked a little bit like a hangover? That was just a couple of weeks ago and already, the city has responded to my words.

Mary Jane Smetanka reports for the StarTribune here:

But the tastiest morsel — for you Luce Lovers —  is this excerpt:

A less major development — but an important one for the area — was Pizza Luce’s purchase of the vacant Bridgeman’s building on 66th Street, just south of Richfield Lake. The restaurant will renovate the building to seat 140 people and will build a new outdoor patio. It is expected to open this summer.

Circa 1979 Bridgeman’s in Richfield, Minn had the typical children’s menus/place mats/coloring page but I knew of no other restaurant (I was seven years old) that had the light-up order number panel over the swinging kitchen door.

I always chose Chicken Dinner #7. It was merely a beautiful coincidence that it was the same number on the children’s menu/place mat/coloring page as my age. When that number lit up, you knew the waitress was about to bust through the door with your plate.

I will delete that memory from my cache as soon as that tired old hole is gutted.

Pizza Lucé is signing the closing papers this week (yay!!) and hope to have their newest restaurant open mid-Summer (YAY!!).

I love Richfield (thank you Academy of the Holy Angels for allowing me to graduate despite the multiple “infractions”) but, let’s keep it real: Richfield needs some serious help, it looks a little bit like a hangover.

Can Tanek + Pizza Lucé bring Richfield back to the post WWII optimism that it was built on? (Waving a flag, saluting) Y-E-S! A thousand times, yes. I can’t wait. And neither can all of those Holy Angels students with off-campus privileges. (Is that still a thing??)