Cliffs Demotion, Clark's Devotion, and a Bloody Mary Potion

Talk about a slap in the face.

The U.P.'s favorite mining company, Cliffs Natural Resources, got word last week that, effective April 1st, it will no longer be listed on the prestigious S&P 500 stock exchange.

It's being demoted down to the S&P midcap 400. That's an exchange that, frankly, most casual investors have never even heard of.

Why the demotion? Cliffs is just not worth as much as it used to be, what with its stock price struggling to climb above $20.

Anybody remember the days when the conventional wisdom around here was you'd never lose on Cliffs stock, and you'd likely get rich on it? Yeah, well, times have changed.

The stock price has been languishing for years, Cliffs management just recently had to deal with hostile takeover attempt by an activist hedge fund, and now the company's been booted down to the minor leagues of stock exchanges.

The good news in all this? The Empire mine is staying open and the U.P. is keeping hundreds of well-paying jobs. At least for now.
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Clark Park--or the Clark Lambros Beach Park as it will officially be known--is one step closer to reality.

Both the state senate and the house have now passed appropriations bills that include funding of the park. Minor differences in the bills have to be ironed out, which should be no problem, and then the bill goes to Governor Snyder for his signature.

It's a helluva deal for Marquette, thanks to longtime businessman Clark Lambros, who died more than a year ago, and his partner, Michele Butler.

Clark wanted the park. Michele is making it happen.

With the help of the DNR Trust Fund, Clark and Michele are giving 17 acres of property at the confluence of the Dead River and Lake Superior to the city. Twelve of the acres will go the park; the adjacent five acres will go to a trail system.

Seventeen acres worth somewhere around $1.5 million. Yeah, that's a nice little gift.

It'll include rest rooms, showers, a pavilion, picnic tables, barbeque grills and a kayak launch.

Planning and design details still have to be worked out with the city, but Butler hopes the project will be finished by late fall.

Lambros is one of those people who made Marquette the very special city that it is today.                                     
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That empty space at Peter White Public Library that Tu Kaluthia used to fill is getting a new tenant within a month.

The new café? Paladino's.

It'll be the creation of Andrew Sear, the current chef at the Irish Rover and former chef at Capers. He's planning on offering soups, salads, sandwiches, desserts and coffee.

Finally, after a four month hiatus, we'll have some nourishment and aromas at the library.

Sear, by the way, has even grander plans. He, along with roofer and developer Dan Perkins, is hoping to open up a "healthy comfort food restaurant" in Ishpeming within the year. The exact site is not yet determined.

Sear is also involved in plans for a multi-acre produce garden with green houses in Ishpeming.

Exciting plans. We'll see if they pan out.
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It's becoming the "it" spot to be on Sunday mornings.

The Northland Pub at the Landmark Inn has been offering Bloody Mary Sundays for the last few months--make-your-own-Bloody-Marys, along with a jazz duo from 11 to 3.

A great combination.

How do you make a Bloody Mary? Well, lessee, here are some of the ingredients: celery, carrots, pickled onions, pickled beans, pickled mushrooms, pickled asparagus, cheese, red and green peppers, fiery olives and bacon. Bacon? Hell yeah, drop a couple strips in your Bloody Mary.

Basically, it's a buffet to help you purge the demons from the night before.
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If you're not a sports fan, you probably haven't noticed, but ESPN UP, which is sports talk radio here, has made some changes lately.

Ryan Mayer is the lone host on the Sports Pen on weekday afternoons. It used to be two hosts who tried--often in vain--to engage listeners calling in. You kinda felt sorry for them because it was a beg-fest at times. Please call in! Here's our phone number for the 42nd time this hour!

Mayer says he's not going to beg.  He'll welcome calls if they come in but otherwise he'll rely on scheduled interviews with sports figures and journalists, as well as input from the audience via social media.

Is the new format successful? No way of knowing. Listener ratings in the UP are notoriously unreliable.

One thing ESPN UP does have to clean up, though, is its recorded one minute clips from previous shows that it continues to play over and over and over again. Two weeks ago, they played a clip from the Colin Cowherd show in which he rated his top 10 teams from midway through the NFL season. That was back in November!

A couple of days ago, they played a segment of an analyst back in January telling us who might win the gold medal in hockey in the Olympics.

Enough. Show some respect for your audience.

You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com

Tu Kaluthia Closes, CBS Sniffs Around

One of Marquette's culinary treasures is closing down.

Tu Kaluthia Café, which has served delicious Greek food and coffee in a corner of the Peter White Library for the past nine years has been forced to close its doors by the city building inspector.

The problem? There's no vent for the toaster oven in the café, and the library isn't going to build one. Tu Kaluthia has never been a full service restaurant and was never intended to be.

Tough luck for owner Aza Wolfcale and for the fans of her cooking. You might recall she had to close down the Rubaiyat, an ambitious and charming Mediterranean restaurant, two years ago, even though it seemed enormously popular.

Good food and good service don't necessarily translate into restaurant success.
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For some skeptics, year-round farming in the U.P. might seem like a pipe dream but don't tell that to the newly created, non-profit Partridge Creek Farm. They've got 27 acres of land in southeast Ishpeming that they hope will be producing harvests in the next year.

Among the plans: a hardy, four-season greenhouse, a farming education center, two fulltime employees, and outside fields that will produce crops between June and November.

Zoning issues still need to be resolved with the city and grants are being solicited, but private donations are already coming in. The farm's board of directors is also seeking counsel from private farmers in the area.

What's not to like about the idea? More locally grown food for us, more education for us on how to grow our own.
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The rumors have been out there for more than a year--the CBS affiliate in Green Bay, WFRV, is planning to make a big splash in the U.P. by starting a local newscast on its local affiliate, WJMN.

In other words, another station to take on TV6, one of the most dominant small stations in the U.S., along with TV10.

"When" has always been the question for the move. We now know that a WJMN executive has been contacting current and former TV6 news staffers about possible employment, but no one is saying publicly when WJMN would start its local newscast. Or even where. The studio could be in Marquette or elsewhere.

Repeated calls to the general manager at WFRV have yielded no answers so far.
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On the radio front, ESPN UP has a new personality. He's Ryan Mayer, fresh out of Philadelphia and Hofstra University.

He replaced longtime veteran Casey Ford who recently left broadcasting to sell cars at Frei Chevrolet. Cynics in the broadcasting industry would say that's clear evidence of upward mobility.

Mayer now teams with Bill Blohm for their daily Sports Pen show from 4-5 pm. What kind of audience does the show get? Nobody really knows.

Station general manager Tom Mogush says Arbitron used to do the count but it recently sold out to Nielsen which, he claims, makes only a token effort to measure the radio audience here in the U.P.

Mogush is convinced, however, that there's a real hunger for more local sports here. He promises expanded local programming in the next year. No details yet.