Home Care In Circle Pines, MN

CIRCLE PINES — If you live in Circle Pines or drive through the city, you likely have come to know where the Down Under property is and what it looks like.

The property, located at 10100 Lake Drive, has sat vacant since around 2010. The property is owned by brothers Timothy Pawlik and Thomas Pawlik. The men’s parents, Joe and Jan Pawlik, acquired the property from the city back in 1975.

Back in January 2019, the city passed a resolution ordering the repair, removal or razing of the structure, which the city deemed a “hazardous property” under Minnesota Statute 463.17. The building was ultimately demolished in April 2019.

City Administrator Patrick Antonen explained that the city’s building official, Rum River Consultants, recently conducted an inspection and declared the property a public nuisance. Several code violations remain on the property, including a temporary fence that has been up for well over 180 days. He also said that what is left of the building’s basement is in dangerous condition.

“It’s a significant problem,” Antonen said. “The city has the ability to take care of that public nuisance.”

Antonen added that both of the owners as well as the attorney who represents them have been contacted via certified mail regarding the city’s declaration and its plans to conduct a public hearing. The hearing is scheduled for the next City Council meeting, Tuesday, Aug. 10.

Antonen said they were given until July 16 to obtain a demolition permit, which had not been pulled as of last week.

“People are probably wondering why we haven’t done this earlier, and the reason is we have been working through the legal process and making sure we cross all our t’s and dot all of our i’s and make sure everything is on the up and up and that we don’t expose ourselves to any legal issues,” Council Member Matt Percy said.

“This is something we are all very interested in, and we are working very hard on this. Sorry that it has taken longer than anyone hoped for. Believe me, we are all very much on board with you in that regard as well. This it the next step, and I’m looking forward to moving forward with it.”

The Quad Community Press reached out to Timothy Pawlik but did not hear back before press deadline.

CIRCLE PINES, Minn. — Deputies used an unlikely tool inside a Twin Cities sports arena Thursday to mitigate a dangerous ammonia leak.

The Anoka County Sheriff's Office says deputies were called to Centennial Sports Arena in Circle Pines after its ice surface's refrigeration system broke down, leading to an ammonia leak inside the arena.

"The levels of ammonia in the rink were 400ppm (the safe exposure limit is 35ppm for no longer than 15 minutes)," the sheriff's office wrote in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter.

Crews from the Spring Lake Park, Blaine, Mounds View Fire Department rushed to the scene, and were presented with a major dilemma: if this didn't get fixed within a few hours, the ice would melt, and ice restoration would take two weeks — creating a major headache for all the local hockey teams that depend on it.

MORE: A look inside the United States' first-ever certified "Blue Zone" located in Minnesota

Also, even if all fans from every local department were brought to the arena, it probably wouldn't be enough to beat the clock.

Thankfully, someone thought of the ACSO's airboat, which was brought to the arena and effectively ventilated the building with time to spare.

"Thank you Spring Lake Park, Blaine, Mounds View Fire Dept. for keeping the building secure and creatively problem-solving a solution!" the sheriff's department wrote.

It took "a few five-minute bursts of air" from the airboat to drop the ammonia level down to a safe zone.

The 31-year-old arena, the first in the Twin Cities with an Olympic-size ice surface, underwent an $8.5 million renovation in 2019.

Stephen Swanson

Stephen Swanson is a web producer at WCCO. A 20-year station veteran, Stephen was a floor director for a decade before moving to the newsroom, where he focuses on general assignment reporting.

Workers at the Frattallone's Hardware & Garden in Circle Pines, located about 15 minutes northeast of Minneapolis, make $10 to $12 per hour. One worker who's been at the shop for 26 years is still capped off at $12, cashier Billisse Haji tells Racket.

When founder Larry Frattallone cashed out of his 22 Minnesota hardware stores last fall, around 14 Circle Pines workers figured the new owner, Tennessee-based hardware giant Central Network Retail Group (CNRG), could afford to boost their pay. Larry's sons, Tom and Mike, maintain leadership roles with CNRG, so Haji and her colleagues asked Mike for a raise.

Crickets. (The Frattallones didn't respond to Racket's request for comment.)

"After we were bought out by a new, bigger company we asked for a pay raise because we knew they could afford it," Haji says. "We were ignored by Mike Frattallone, we were ignored by the higher-ups, so we decided to unionize."

That's when the Circle Pines team reached out to CMRJB Workers United, the union that successfully organized the first-ever unionized Starbucks last month in Buffalo, New York. An affiliate of the 14,000-member union SEIU, Workers United announced the Twin Cities union drive on December 30, stating that an "overwhelming majority" of hourly workers at the Circle Pines shop had signed union cards.

At this phase of unionization, things can go the easy way (voluntary employer recognition) or the hard way (a vote overseen by the National Labor Relations Board). It seems the Frattallones chose the latter.

"When we went public with the union, Mike Frattalone posted an [internal] response," Haji says. "He said nobody ever came to him about the pay–we did go to him about the pay."

"For many of us, Frattalone's Hardware is home, and our co-workers are a second family," the Circle Pines workers wrote in a December 29 email to Mike. "Unfortunately, we feel that our loyalty and commitment to the company isn't always reciprocated… We are having real trouble making ends meet with what we earn at Frattalone's."

The workers noted that CNRG's parent company, Orgil Inc., raked in over $3 billion in 2020. Pay is really the only grievance, Haji says, noting with a laugh that the store's dingy employee restrooms could use a cash infusion, too.

"We love the place we work, we love the customers and our coworkers," she says. "We don’t want to over-ask, we just want to get our pay to $15.65—a livable wage would be appreciated.”

There's no set date for the NLRB vote, though Haji says she's already feeling a sense of solidarity inside the shop. Should the yeas outweigh the nays: blammo, first-ever union Frattallone's. Conversations have begun about introducing colleagues at other Frattallone's Hardware locations to the union. Locally, half of the six Half Price Books locations experienced a domino unionization effect amid Striketober.

That sense of labor momentum is already spreading at Starbucks. On Monday, workers at a downtown Chicago location announced that they'd signed union cards with Workers United. Same story last week in Broomfield, Colorado.

"We were inspired by them," Haji says of Starbucks workers. "And we thought, 'Hey, if a big corporation like that can get unionized, then us, a smaller business, can definitely do it.'"

Editor’s note: This brunch has been discontinued.

Many Midwesterners know about spaghetti suppers or church basement dinners — gatherings at long cafeteria tables beneath fluorescent lights. Often they are fundraisers or happen after services. The meal isn’t always great, but it has something. Like familiarity, or more likely the comfort of 20 or 50 other people sharing something they need, the echo of many hands and favorite family recipes.

In a lot of ways, the Filipino (or Pinoy) brunch in Circle Pines couldn’t get more Midwestern. Every Sunday from 10 to 4, Mena-li Canlas (above) lays a spread in the Pines Market convenience store and marks up a whiteboard with the day’s menu in joyful colors. A plate of rice and two entrees is $6.25; rice and three entrees is $7.50. It’s a good idea to check Facebook for the menu or call ahead.

“This is not restaurant food,” explained Canlas with a warm smile. She runs a word-of-mouth-based catering company called Tita Li’s Kitchen. “This is lola food,” she says. “’Lola’ means grandma.”

Canlas gave us a loving tour of her table: sweet and oily chorizo-like sausages, adobo dark-meat chicken that was tender and moist, crispy fried chunks of melty pork called lechon, and Filipino fried rice, which is essentially garlic-scented white rice. Canlas’s brunch was humble and heavy and nothing like we’ve ever seen. I kept imagining the buffets of rust-colored sloppy joes and sweet cookie salad I grew up finding at family reunions. How strange and wonderful to stumble upon someone else’s version of home-cooked weekend food.

Our plates were a fascinating mosaic of Asian, Spanish, and Latin American flavors. The lengua (Spanish for “tongue”) with mushrooms could easily pass for a tepid cream of mushroom-based pot pie without the crust. And Pancit Palabok is a medley of noodles, chopped bacon and shrimp, green onions, and hard-boiled eggs. It was porky, tangy, squishy, and totally confusing. But so is cookie salad.

Dessert gets its very own table at Canlas’s brunch. Pairs of empanadas sit close to piles of yellow button cakes made from rice flour, and a large purple and white jellyroll called Ube Roll. We dug into a slice of Leche Flan Cake ($3.50), which the woman at the table described as “egg on top, cake on bottom.” The fluffy chiffon cake is soaked in a golden, liquidy caramel that starts off almost boozy and ends up mellow and full of vanilla. On top, something like strained custard is buttery and marvelous.

When pressed by a friend, Canlas sheepishly admitted she’d been featured in a book published in 2012 called Asian Flavors: Changing the Tastes of Minnesota since 1875, by Phyllis Louise Harris. And thank goodness, because Filipino food is hard to find in the Twin Cities. What we do have is this friendly, sparse spot in Circle Pines for a glimpse into what it’s like to have a family meal in a Filipino kitchen.

Filipino Brunch by Tita Li’s Kitchen Filipino comfort food in Circle Pines 2 S Pine Dr (Pines Market / Clark Station) Circle Pines, MN 55014 763.432.0768 CHEF: Mena-li Canlas HOURS: Sun 10am-4pm BAR: None RESERVATIONS / RECOMMENDED?: No / No VEGETARIAN / VEGAN: Limited / No ENTREE RANGE: A la carte, combos $6.25-7.50

They could put her picture next to it in the dictionary. Born with two club feet, Dahl refused to accept limitations placed on her. She played soccer and basketball in grade school until the pain in her feet forced her out. Then she discovered rowing.

This spring, the 2021 Centennial graduate helped the University of Virginia rowing team capture the Atlantic Coach Conference championship and place 10th in the NCAA meet as a sophomore.

Also eligible for Paralympic rowing, she’s in a group that won a meet in Paris in July and will compete in the World Rowing Championships in Serbia, Sept. 3-10, trying to qualify for the 2024 Paralympic Games.

“I was built to compete,” Dahl declared, in a film she put out last November called “The Power of Perseverance and Why it Matters” to share her story and perhaps inspire others. The film can be viewed at YouTube.com/watch?v=OVve86pKC58.

To make the film she teamed with Uncut, an organization that spotlights student/athletes’ lives outside their sport, especially those with a unique personal story. “I received an incredible amount of support and positive feedback,” she said.

Dahl was born with bilateral club feet (both in her case; in some babies it’s just one) meaning that the bones are out of the standard position. Typically, the front half of the affected foot turns inward and the heel points down.

Her early childhood was marked by surgeries, casts, braces, specialized footwear, physical therapy and trips to the Children’s Hospital. Her situation improved.

“By the age of three I was walking without casts or braces,” she said. “At that point I was wearing braces only at night.”

Dahl expressed great appreciation for all the help and encouragement she received from doctors, nurses, and therapists, but one thing rankled her a bit.

“Too much time was spent setting low expectations for me and my athletic future,” Dahl said in the Perseverance film. Such assessments “became fuel for me.”

Starting in second and third grade, she tried soccer, then basketball, but suffered broken bones in her feet competing in both sports.

X-rays showed her out-of-place bones rubbed together and eventually cracked. She played both sports for five years until “the pain came too great to enjoy those sports any longer.”

After reluctantly giving up the sports that “I had become pretty good at during my early years,” she found her true niche in the competitive world when she was a freshman — with an assist from her next-door neighbor in Circle Pines, Nancy Jannik.

“Nancy recommended I try a sport that doesn’t put so much pressure on my feet. She recommended rowing.”

Jannik grew up in South Carolina and her family was all involved in rowing, which is popular in the southeast. Dahl was intrigued.

With her parents Andy and Kari, she visited Jannik’s hometown in the summer of 2018 and checked out the rowing club, where she “hopped into a boat” and learned the basics. That was all it took. Back home, she joined Twin Cities Youth Rowing. Minnesota has a thriving rowing community, she said, despite the climate.

Rowing appears to be an upper body sport, but, the 5-foot-10 Dahl points out, most of the power is actually generated from the legs. Still, rowing took the strain off her vulnerable feet. The rowers’ feet, in both collegiate and para, are secured in built-in shoes on the angled footboard.

Dahl walks normally, which you can see in her film, but she had to give up running of any kind after her soccer and basketball ventures.

“I have learned to walk in a way that is comfortable for my feet. And in general, my walk looks basically like everyone else,” she said. Her doctors “strongly recommended” to avoid running due to the likelihood of re-injury.

While competing with Twin Cities Youth Rowing throughout her years at Centennial — where she was Student Council president, and active in National Honor Society — Dahl and her team had enough success for her to be a good prospect for college rowing.

Aiming high, she enrolled at Virginia, a powerhouse under longtime coach Kevin Sauer. Virginia has won 21 of the last 22 Atlantic Coast Conference titles and has placed in the top 10 at nationals the last five years.

In this year’s nine-team ACC meet, May 13 in North Carolina, Virginia won four of the five races. Dahl rowed on the Cavaliers’ No. 2 unit that came from behind to edge Duke for first place. At nationals, May 28 in New Jersey (won by Stanford), there were three races. Virginia’s top team placed fifth, Dahl’s foursome placed 10th and their third unit took 11th.

In Para rowing, the classes are PR1 (for rowers whose function is upper trunk only), PR2 (full trunk) and PR3 (full trunk and lower body). Rowers in PR1 and PR2 must use a fixed seat, In PR3, they use a sliding seat like in club and college rowing.

Dahl is assigned to PR3. She earned her spot on the PR3 mixed four plus coxswain team at a two-week selection camp in New Jersey.

The group placed first in the Para Rowing Regatta to Paris on July 9, comfortably ahead of teams from Italy and France, in two races at Vaires-sur-Marne, France.

Other members were Ben Washburne of Connecticut and Saige Harper, Alex Flynn and Emilie Eldracher, all of Massachusetts. They’re now gearing for the meet in Serbia, the first opportunity for crews to qualify for the 2024 Paralympic Games. Another opportunity will be held in May of 2024.

“Her college coaches have been extremely supportive,” said Andy Dahl, “of her dual ambition of being a top NCAA D-1 rower as well as an international Para rower.”

Dahl, who is majoring Psychology, with a minor in leadership, was named to the ACC All-Academic team.

Addressing what drives her, Dahl said, “Being a competitive athlete is special.” Her film’s purpose, she said, was “To ignite unlimited potential of all women and girls.”