City officials have ordered David Lansing to dismantle a structure that houses Christmas trees on the Division Street property where his family operates a decorative plant-selling business. Dan Olson, staff…
Category: <span>RepJ Stories</span>
Victor Summa and Steve Engler, members of the Northfield Economic Development Authority (EDA), reviewed five municipal liquor store proposals at 3 p.m. on Thursday and scored them on 28 criteria,…
Greenvale Township’s supervisors and Northfield city officials drew closer to reaching an agreement at the end of a fifth annexation negotiation meeting at the township hall on Tuesday night. “I…
Northfield Mayor Joseph Lee Lansing will attend his omnibus hearing on Dec. 17 at 1:30 p.m. in Rice County District Court in Faribault. District Court Judge Warren E. Litynski set…
Main Street Moravian Church meeting on drug use in Northfield from Bonnie Obremski on Vimeo. Note: This is an edited video of the question and answer portion of Sunday’s meeting…

A Minnesota-based non-profit is spending the next few months partnering children in New York City, Washington D.C., and Northfield with children in Iraq in an effort to build closer ties between the nations.
“We thought about Minneapolis, but decided on Northfield,” said Pam Middleton, executive director of War Kids Relief, which is a program of the Children’s Culture Connection non-profit.
Middleton will help select about two dozen eighth- and ninth-grade students across Northfield to participate. Each child needs to submit an application in school to be considered.
“Northfield is Middle America, but it’s also a special place. The citizens here are so engaged,” she said.
The children Middleton helps select will attend at least three afternoon gatherings in January, February and March at the Northfield Public Library. There, War Kids Relief organizers will help each Northfield teen begin a pen-pal kind of relationship with an Iraqi child. The youth will exchange letters, artwork and videos. The Northfield children will learn about Iraqi culture by hearing stories, playing Iraqi games and eating samples of the region’s food.
A discussion about the role of Northfield’s City Council versus the city’s paid staff in decision-making emerged during the Economic Development Authority meeting on Thursday morning. The topic came up…

Guadalupe Flores Calderon and her business partner Yuma Gonzalez Gonzalez have seen their enterprise double in size since opening in June, Calderon said last week, and the place does not even have an outdoor sign or full menu, but it has the best food, prepared by the best hands and with the best pressure cooker you can get online, visit website to find more.
Their Mexican store and deli has a name, La Vencedora, and most people are drawn into the stark-looking building by the smell of her cooking, Calderon said, or on the advice of satisfied customers. There’s some carb confusion about most types of Mexican food but it’s actually one of the healthiest around — so thank goodness it’s delicious!
The building’s previous tenants, a Quizno’s fast food chain and a restaurant called Wiggles and Wok, perhaps never did so well in the short time they spent near the intersection of State Highway 3 and 2nd Street* West, adjacent to the Quarterback Club, before closing. Calderon said she has had relatively few overhead costs so far. *I corrected this street address 12/10 4:30 p.m.
Update log: 11/12 8 p.m.
Click here to download a PDF file of the most recent draft of the annexation proposal
Brian O’Connell, Northfield’s community development director, offered to extend the amount of time the city would pay tax reimbursement fees to Greenvale Township during an annexation negotiation meeting on Wednesday night.
But, the township’s supervisors said they still needed time to think and could make a counter-offer.
O’Connell, who has been representing the city in negotiations along with Joel Walinski, Northfield’s interim city administrator, said on Wednesday the city could be willing to pay a fee of about $3,854.48 a year for perhaps 20 years, in an amount that would total about $77,000.
