Sunday News Clips: 6/13

• A big NoCo high-five to Nate Bennett and his staff at Hendel’s Market Cafe in Old Town Florissant! Not only has business been booming lately, but St. Louis radio legend Ron Elz, aka Johnny Rabbitt, just named Hendel’s one of his top ten favorite restaurants in St. Louis! In a lengthy history and review of the cafe, he called it “an increasingly hard-to-find type of place where everything blends together to give you a memorably wonderful dining experience.” Wow!  Go, Hendel’s!

Steven Harris CPA

• Congratulations are also in order for Florissant resident and CPA Steven Harris, who was recently promoted to partner at RubinBrown, one of the Midwest’s largest accounting and business consulting firms! A graduate of UMSL, Harris is actively involved in the local community and serves as director of the National Association of Black Accountants. Bravo, Steven!

• Accessible Play, a local nonprofit dedicated to building an “all-inclusive playground” in Florissant’s Manion Park, is hoping to get one step closer to its goal of raising $1 million…and you can help. On June 30, the organization will receive 20% of all food sales at Deaver’s Restaurant and Sports Bar, located at 2109 Charbonier Road.

Accessible Play‘s plans for the 10,000-square-foot playground (pictured below) call for numerous accessibility features, including braille signage, barrier-free pathways and rubber surfaces to accommodate people with mobility issues. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2011.

A playground for everyone, courtesy of Accessible Play

• Why let summer vacation just slip by? If you’re a young woman in high school, you have until June 15 to sign up for Girls’ Leadership Camp at UMSL! This four-day workshop offers practical, hands-on learning experiences and the chance to hear from successful professional women in multiple career fields. Find a mentor. Prepare for college. Meet new friends! Enrollment is $195, with financial assistance available. To sign up, look here or call (314) 516-5908.

• You may have read about Florissant’s historic Henry Albers house back in November, which was for sale at the time. Now, the National Register property is set to get a new tenant: Generations Antique Mall. After three years on rue St. Francois, the shop is relocating in order to have more square footage and hopefully higher visibility. Stop by for a visit @ 250 rue St. Catherine.

• Bel-Nor’s most infamous residence – the house on Roanoke Drive where many events from the real-life Exorcist took place – is soon to be featured in a new documentary by “paranormal filmmakers” Christoper and Philip Booth. The Haunted Boy: The Secret Diary of the Exorcist aims to tell the “real story” of what happened here back in the 1940s, when a young boy from Maryland was exorcised by local priests. Keep an eye out and you’ll also notice the grand old St. Vincent’s Hospital on St. Charles Rock Road, whose Chateauesque towers and basement “therapy” rooms (complete with shackles) have yielded plenty of ghost stories on their own.

• Not long ago, the State Board of Education voted to replace school board members in the Riverview Gardens School District with a special three-person administrative board led by veteran educator Lynn Beckwith, Jr. Now, that new board is seeking input from students, parents, staff and area residents, and all are invited to a community meeting on Tuesday, June 22. Participants will each have up to three minutes to speak. The meeting will be held at Westview Middle School, 1950 Nemnich, at 7pm.

• North County Incorporated is once again seeking nominations for its 30 Leaders in Their Thirties award, which recognizes those who are making a positive contribution to North County. If you know someone in their thirties who lives or works in NoCo and deserves to be honored, go to the NCI website for a nomination form. The deadline is July 16, 2010, and awards will be distributed in September.

• It’s amazing what volunteers can achieve…just ask the city of Hazelwood! Members of the Hazelwood Police Department’s Volunteers in Police Services (VIPS) recently presented the city council with a check for $301,000, symbolizing the amount of money they save for the community each year. VIPS has 25 members who donate a total of 10-12,000 hours of service annually, helping the police department with a variety of tasks.

“They do everything ranging from school DARE program graduations to providing traffic control at city-sponsored events, organizing neighborhood watch programs and manning the St. Louis Mills police substation,” says Hazelwood Police Sergeant Don Routh. “This volunteer support allows more of our officers to be out in the community instead of being chained to a desk doing paperwork.”

Hazelwood VIPS members Pat Corzine and Chuck Hermann (center) present their check to Police Chief Carl Wolf and Mayor Matthew Robinson.

• If you’re a recent college graduate and you’re looking to buy a home, be sure to check out Ferguson! Thanks to UMB Bank and the Ferguson Neighborhood Improvement Program, you might be able to score a $2,500 grant in the Ferguson Graduation Gift Program…as in free money to help you purchase a house! Only two grants are available, and they’re given out first come, first serve, so act quickly! College grads at all levels – bachelor to doctorate – are eligible. For more info, call (314) 524-5196 or visit the city’s website.

• Innovation seems to be a key concept at the Hazelwood School District lately. First there were the e-textbooks offered in a pilot program. Now the district has teamed with Washington University to allow fourth though eighth grade math and science teachers to earn a graduate certificate and 15 credit hours toward a master’s degree!  Co-sponsored by Boeing and MasterCard, the program will have a minimal cost for participants, and the goal is to enrich teachers with advanced skills and knowledge.

• In other school news, three North County districts – Pattonville, Hazelwood and Ferguson-Florissant – recently received the “What Parents Want” Award from SchoolMatch, a national firm that ranks schools based on their ability to meet the needs of their communities. Twenty-eight Missouri districts achieved the honor (including Clayton, Ladue and Parkway), with winners chosen based on parent questionnaires and criteria such as class size, academic test scores, teacher salaries, and how money is spent for media services. Only about 16 percent of public school districts nationwide meet the award criteria. So…what’s that I hear about “bad schools” in NoCo?! Ha!

• Finally, a huge thank you to my newest NOCO advertiser, Commercial Bank, whose ad will start running in a few days! As you can see in this April article, bank president Brad Purcell is a lifelong North County resident and all-around great guy! If you’re shopping for a local bank that delivers truly personal service and will work closely with you to achieve your financial goals, visit the Florissant location of Commercial Bank!

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