CommonBond Communities, a nonprofit provider of affordable and supportive housing throughout the Midwest, will lay off 117 positions from its St. Paul headquarters, cutting its central workforce by more than half.

In a letter to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, officials with CommonBond said they had decided to outsource their property management department and “tangential positions” from 1080 Montreal Ave. to “other companies within the area.”

The layoffs are scheduled to begin July 18 and continue through Jan. 31, impacting a variety of company work units, including community resource advantage services, compliance, facilities, finance, fund development, human resources, information technology, marketing and communications, and property management.

The reduction in workers will leave a team of 107 employees covering the remaining business areas. No further information was immediately available.

Since 1971, CommonBond Communities has managed and developed affordable housing in more than 60 cities across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and South Dakota. Its properties include Seward Tower East and Seward Tower West on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, as well as Skyline Tower, Wilder Square and Lexington Commons in St. Paul.

The nonprofit is also developing five affordable housing developments within Highland Bridge, including the new Lumin and Harken apartments, both of which cater to low-income seniors.

— Frederick Melo

Cooks of Crocus Hill making some changes

After five years in a partnership called “Cooks | Bellecour,” Grand Avenue culinary shop Cooks of Crocus Hill is separating from chef Gavin Kaysen’s bakery and rebranding back to its long-standing solo name.

Cooks of Crocus Hill plans to maintain its flagship St. Paul location as normal — minus the pastries that had been delivered daily.

In the North Loop of Minneapolis, the retail shop and bakery will close but Cooks will continue to operate a cooking school, and the Edina location will close altogether, both effective May 31.

The kitchen store and cooking school, which marked its 50th anniversary in 2023, had been renamed from Th’rice to Cooks of Crocus Hill when founder Martha Kaemmer moved it to the current Grand Avenue location in 1988.

Current owners Karl Benson and Marie Dwyer have run the business since 2008 and, in a post-Bellecour era, are planning additional programming including culinary travel, a spokesperson said.

“That is partly how we have been able to survive in this business, is constant innovation,” Dwyer told the Pioneer Press in 2023. “We’ve learned so much along the way. Make the same mistake twice? I don’t think so.”

To remain relevant, Benson added in 2023, “we have to change, to stay exactly the same.”

— Jared Kaufman

Highway 3 roundabout subject of meeting

If you have a school-aged child in Rosemount, odds are you’ve waited in line at a particular intersection that is undergoing an update this summer.

Located just paces from Rosemount High School and Rosemount Middle School, the intersection at Minnesota 3 and 142nd St. W. is getting a new roundabout to improve safety and reduce delays, according to a news release from the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

A public meeting is planned for Wednesday to discuss the $3 million project, which will see Minnesota 3 closed in both directions between Connemara Trail and 145th Street starting June 9 through September.

In addition to the roundabout, crews will add drainage and re-align the bike and pedestrian crosswalks to include access to the roundabout, according to the project page.

The public meeting, which starts at 4:30 p.m. at the Rosemount High School Student Center at 3335 142nd St. W., will have visuals of the roundabout and detours.

While there will not be a formal presentation, members of the project team will be in attendance to answer questions.

— Mars King

Angler discovers scuttled tugboat

A Wisconsin angler fishing in the fog this week discovered the wreck of an abandoned tugboat submerged in the waters of Lake Michigan for more than a century, state officials announced Friday.

Wisconsin Historical Society Maritime Archaeologist Tamara Thomsen said that the society confirmed that Christopher Thuss found the wreck of the J.C. Ames. Thuss was fishing in Lake Michigan off the city of Manitowoc in foggy conditions on Tuesday when he noticed the wreckage in 9 feet of water off a breakwater, she said in a message to the Associated Press.

The society said that according to the book “Green Bay Workhorses: The Nau Tug Line,” the Rand and Burger shipbuilding company in Manitowoc built the J.C. Ames in 1881 to help move lumber. The tug was one of the largest and most powerful on the Great Lakes, with a 670-horsepower engine.

The tug served multiple purposes beyond moving lumber, including transporting railway cars. It eventually fell into disrepair and was scuttled in 1923, as was the practice then when ships outlived their usefulness, Thomsen said.

The ship had been buried in the sand at the bottom of the lake for decades before storms this winter apparently revealed it, Thomsen said. A lack of quagga mussels attached to the ship indicates it was only recently exposed, she said.

Historians are racing to locate shipwrecks and downed planes in the Great Lakes before quagga mussels destroy them. Quagga have become the dominant invasive species in the lower lakes over the last 30 years, attaching themselves to wooden shipwrecks and sunken aircraft in layers so thick they eventually crush the wreckage.

“These kinds of discoveries are always so exciting because it allows a piece of lost history to resurface. It sat there for over a hundred years and then came back on our radar completely by chance,” Thomsen said in a statement.

— Associated Press