A Healthy Spice of Life
"My passion is good food and watching people enjoy my food." Sister Marie de Porres Taylor's vision for Thyme Café is for patrons to feel "at home and comfortable." Located at 4173 MacArthur Blvd., Thyme Cafe is the newest eatery in the Laurel and has been a long-time coming.
Just like home, you will bus your own tables and enjoy healthful ingredients from local growers and humane ranches. The menu features a variety of flavors, from Creole and Caribbean to African and the Mediterranean, as well as good old American food, for take-out or eat-in. Sister Marie, a Maxwell Park resident, spent the better part of two years getting Thyme off the ground, converting a former cell-phone store into a casual eatery. "This journey has had many trials and tribulations, and it is worth every bit of the labor."
Thyme Cafe is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Saturday. Catering is also available. For more information: www.thyme-café.com, 336-1300.
Laurel Lofts " A Construction Hard-Hat Tour
It's November 14, 2007, and Berkeley developer Daniel Altman and general contractor Pinchas Nagar are selecting tile grout colors for their new mixed-use project at the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and 35th Avenue. Daniel says, "We'll finish the tilework today, and then the building shell will be closed and watertight, ready for the rains." He anticipates a March 2008 completion.
From the exterior, the building is painted and appears nearly complete. Inside, however, work has just begun. Sheetrock panels lie in stacked piles throughout the rooms, as wiring and plumbing pipe stick out from exposed wall and ceiling wood framing. The future locations of bathroom and kitchen counters and appliances are spray-painted on the plywood floors. Daniel walks around the lines as he describes the rooms and amenities.
Inside the ground-floor corner commercial space, Daniel says, "This would be perfect for a café. It will have high ceilings, a wheelchair-accessible bathroom and plumbing stub-outs ready for a small kitchen." When asked about the rumors that Peet's Coffee might move into the neighborhood, he answers, "They looked at it, and we're still talking. There is also a bakery on Grand Avenue. But for now, it's still available."
In addition to the commercial space, the Laurel Lofts includes nine two- and three-story condominium live-work lofts. Residents and their guests will park in private garages or carport spaces accessed through a gated driveway on 35th Avenue. Except for the large four-bedroom, four-bathroom unit directly over the corner commercial space, each unit has a ground floor space with a storefront opening to the street sidewalk. Ranging from 200 to 400 square feet and with their own wheelchair-accessible bathroom, they can serve as a private commercial space or workshop or as additional living space.
Daniel anticipates that families will purchase the condominium units, because "the units have lots of bedrooms, bathrooms and storage." In fact, the typical loft unit has three bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and about 1,500 square feet, not including the ground floor garage or commercial space.
Daniel talks as we walk through an unfinished unit facing 35th Avenue, "The living rooms will have 20-foot-high ceilings, with nine-foot high ceiling in the other rooms. There will be wood floors, and rooms will be wired for Internet and future technologies. The kitchens will have granite counters and come with appliances. The exterior walls will have two layers of sheetrock and special dual-glazed windows to keep out noise. There will be central heating and air conditioning. The rooms will have fire sprinklers."
We continue walking through several units. Each bedroom seems to have its own complete bathroom and windows with nice views of the surrounding hills. The living room of the unit over the ground-floor café space offers a wide view of the Laurel archway and a peek of the bay down 35th Avenue.
We end the tour in the courtyard. "This will be landscaped as a shared outdoor garden", Daniel says, "and the shared driveway will be paved to allow rainwater to flow through it into the earth."
The tour has lasted for about an hour, and Daniel and Pinchas excuse themselves to speak to subcontractors who have just arrived. Even unfinished, the Laurel Lofts is impressive.
Children Tour Lucky's
On October 25, 2007, Lucky's hosted 60 children, along with their parents and teacher from the Virginia Avenue Head Start Program. Store manager Greg Ross reported that they were given a tour of the entire store, including behind-the-scenes operations. "We gave demonstrations of unloading trucks, operating the forklift, baling cardboard, grinding and wrapping meat and preparing produce. Our giant walk-in freezer was a big hit. They were amazed at how cold it was."
Childen walked the produce aisle, calling out the names of various fruits and vegetables. The children sat in a small stadium built of apple juice crates while store employees read them a story: "Pumpkin Soup." After the tour, each child left with a bag of produce, a pumpkin, and a greater knowledge of what occurs behind the scenes of their local Lucky's market.
Kathleen Rolinson can be reached at krolinson\@gmail.com, and John Frando at jfrando\@gmail.com.
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