The good folks at St. Paul Classic Cookie recently opened up a copy of the St. Paul Pioneer Press to discover their cookie store had been shut down. It seems they’re $714 behind on licensing and late fees, which is lousy, because they were already struggling to round up the cash to fix broken kitchen equipment and make a late utility payment.
It’s not easy running a shop during the best of times, but they’ve had another gorilla to worry about. While Raymond Avenue is looking far more presentable these days, construction of the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit line was not kind to their block last year. Their neighbors, Caribe, limped through the 2011 construction season and closed up shop not long after.
St. Paul Classic Cookie isn’t taking the license suspension laying down: they’ve started a Kickstarter.com campaign to raise the funds they need, and the details are on the store’s blog, here.
Valley Blacktopping of Eagan is another company that was mentioned in the recent Pioneer Press article as not having paid up its bituminous contractor license fee or shown necessary evidence of a contractor bond. There’s a good reason for that, says Kelly Johnson, a spokeswoman of sorts for the family-run blacktopping outfit.
“We haven’t done work in the city of St. Paul for two years,” Johnson said. “We’re a reputable company. … We don’t have any jobs scheduled. When we do, we’ll renew our permit. … We like to keep up on everything. We cross our Ts.”