Downtown I.F. pastry shop eyes opening Monday, March 11

La Vanilla Bean Patisserie owner Kay Lynn Broadhead, right, and baker Jessica Carson. 

La Vanilla Bean Patisserie in downtown Idaho Falls has set next Monday as the date for a soft opening.

Owner Kay Lynn Broadhead said they are testing the two gas convection ovens and getting staff trained this week at the corner bakery, which is at 489 Park Avenue, across B Street from Pachanga's.

Although she had hoped to open earlier, time has been her friend, she said. "It took a little longer than I though it would, but that has turned out to be good. We've been able to learn about food service and build relationships."

Broadhead and her baker, Jessica Carson, will be focusing on European style pastries (tarts, torts, Napoleons, eclairs, scones), and will also provide coffee, specialty cakes and lunch. On bread they are being joined by Jackie Cook, whom Broadhead met at culinary school.

Store hours will be 7 a.m to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Hours on Friday and Saturday will be 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Telephone is (208) 881-5176. Here's the link to their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Vanilla-Bean/340374779404337?fref=ts

Broadhead was a communications professor at Idaho State University for 20 years before she took early retirement in 2010 to attend the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt. When she returned to Idaho her plan was to do business in Boise. But the storefront she thought she had lined up went to someone else, and when she started looking at other Idaho locations she was approached by the Greater Idaho Falls Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Development Corp.

"I've got a very good feeling about what's happening with the downtown here," she said.

Pioneer Road now links Sunnyside with Utah Avenue

Pioneer Road now connects to Utah Avenue, providing a straight shot under the Pancheri overpass and south to Sunnyside Road.

If you're looking for a straight shot from the middle of Idaho Falls to Sunnyside Road, Pioneer Road is now open and there is hardly anyone using it. All you need to do is go south on Utah Avenue past Wal-Mart. You'll see a sign on the right, where Arctic Circle now is.

Until last year, Pioneer connected Pancheri Drive with Sunnyside, cutting through farmland. When the new Pancheri overpass was finished last year, however, Pioneer was routed underneath it and over to Utah Avenue.

The road is going to become a lot more important once the Idaho Falls Event Center is built and running. Since it's old blacktop, widening and repaving are likely to be in order.

The land for the event center at Snake River Landing was recommended for annexation into the city at the last Idaho Falls Falls Planning Commission meeting. The matter now goes for a vote by the City Council, and if it is approved the Idaho Falls Convention and Visitors Bureau will be able submit a plat. If the center opens as planned in 2014, Pioneer Road will be one of the main routes to it from Sunnyside Road.

By then, the new Teton Volkswagen dealership ought to be finished. Brian Tomsett of the Idaho Falls Building Department said sign contractor inquiries he's been getting indicate Panda Express is interested in building on the corner of Utah and Pioneer Road.

Bill's Bike Shop plans March 15 opening for new store

There are still plenty of bikes on the showroom floor at Bill's Bike Shop on Holmes Avenue, but within a month they will have been moved to the new store at Snake River Landing, scheduled to open March 15.

Bill's Bike Shop has set a date of March 15 for the soft opening of its new 10,000-square-foot store at Snake River Landing.

Sales associate Darrell Byerly said they will start moving the clothing and accessories this weekend to shelves that are already in place at the new store. The sign in front of the Holmes Avenue store, where Bill's has been since 1987, says the building is available for lease.

Owner Gary Wight bought the business in 2010 from Stan Murdock, whose family had owned Bill's since 1947. The new building will be a full-service bicycle shop from the ground up, with rooms for meetings and classes and a service department that will help them keep up with the massive amount of repair work they do.


When it came to finding a bike-friendly location, Snake River Landing, with its miles of paved trails and access to the Idaho Falls Greenbelt, presented itself as an ideal place. A 400-acre, master-planned community on the west bank of the Snake River between Pancheri Drive and Sunnyside Road, Snatke River Landing includes stores, offices, restaurants and homes in a development that includes parks, trails and water features.

"I wanted to be where it was bicycle friendly," Wight said.

Local banks announce promotions

There were two new promotions in the local banking sector, announced in press releases this past week.

Wells Fargo & Co. has named Grant Nelson its new business banking manager, serving the Idaho Falls and Pocatello markets.

With more than 25 years of experience at the bank, Nelson previously served as a senior business relationship manager in Burley. He also is a former manager of Wells Fargo's St. Anthony and Rexburg branches. Nelson was Southeast Idaho District manager in 2010 and was named to his most recent position as a senior business relationship manager in 2011.

He is a graduate of Utah State University in Logan, Utah, with a degree in agriculture education. He also has a master's degree in adult education from the University of Idaho.

D.L. Evans Bank has announced the appointment of Dee Darrington to investment representative for eastern Idaho. Darrington has a bachelor's degree in economics from Utah State University and an MBA from Idaho State University.

He has more than 16 years of experience in investment consulting and has been in banking for 19 years.

Study names Idaho Falls second happiest city in United States

Should we add "Have a Nice Day" to the water tower?

For a place nobody seems to know much about, Idaho Falls gets a lot of attention when it comes to stories rating places as "most liveable," "best quality of life," etc.

The latest is a story we spotted Sunday night on the U.S. News on NBCNews.com Web site, listing the happiest and most miserable cities in the United States. Wonder of wonders, among the happiest places Idaho Falls ranked second, behind Napa, Calif.

Before we go into more detail, here's a link to the page: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/22/17059015-here-are-the-happiest-saddest-and-most-miserable-us-cities,

I think that with an adequate budget for wine and regular reservations at Mustard's Grill, I could be very happy in Napa, Calif. I was surprised to see Idaho Falls beat out such places as Santa Cruz, Calif., Ashville, N.C., and Boulder, Colo., happening places that I think I could be very happy in.

The obvious question is, "How do they come up with this stuff?"

It turns out that these particular lists were based on a highly detailed survey of people on Twitter and the words they used. It released Valentine's Day by the University of Vermont, its title "The Geography of Happiness: Connecting Twitter sentiment and expression, demographics, and objective characteristics of place." It was put together by five people: Lewis Mitchell, Kameron Decker Harris, Morgan R. Frank, Peter Sheridan Dodds and Christopher M. Danforth. If you're a statistician, here's the link to the paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.3299.

In a blog posting today, author Lewis Mitchell said the team plotted over 10 million geotagged tweets from 2011, looking for happy words.

"With a score of 6.25, we found the happiest city to be Napa, Calif., due to a relative abundance of such happy words as 'restaurant', 'wine', and even 'cheers', along with a lack of profanity," he wrote. "At the other end of the spectrum, we found the saddest city to be Beaumont, Texas, with a score of 5.82. In general, cities in the south tended to be less happy than those in the north, with a major contributing factor being the relative abundance of profanity used in those cities."

Idaho Falls posted a score of 6.21. Here's the chart that details all the words they were looking at to determine this score (click to enlarge):

 

So congratulations, Idaho Falls, the happiest town in the whole U.S.A. that doesn't have to resort to a bottle of fermented grape juice to find it!