This week I bought our final Saturday evening ice cream treats from Izzy’s ice cream store just down the road from where we live. Covid-19, and the uncertainties it’s bringing, gate-crashed the business model; the store is closing.
Izzy’s and our home are built on what was a polluted rail yard, a so-called brown field site. When Izzy’s opened in 2013, the owners could see this area was up-and-coming, with hundreds of condos and rentals coming online. As well as local residents, their customers would be visitors to the Mississippi with its waterfalls and trails, the Guthrie Theater, and Mill City Museum.
Designed by renowned Minnesota architect, David Salmela, the building reminds me how welcome a splash of color can be on a grey winter’s day. The blue keys off the Guthrie Theater at the opposite end of Gold Medal Park. The red is the brand color.
Most of the footprint is a commercial kitchen for making small batches of ice cream using local ingredients. The short tower, at one end, houses the retail store with just a few tables on two floors. The roof structure maximizes natural light.
Izzy’s rotated established and new flavors regularly. Rather than pondering the menu in the store, I reviewed current choices, online, on my phone. Each tub of ice cream had an RFID tag, so the list of currently available flavors was always up-to-date.
We don’t keep ice cream in the fridge because it would be just too tempting. One of life’s pleasures was popping into Izzy’s at the end of a long bicycle ride for a scoop topped with the obligatory small Izzy’s scoop, an opportunity to try two flavors
The business is operated with great integrity, making it doubly sad to see it leave our neighborhood. They will continue to manufacture ice cream at a factory in Wisconsin, near the cows. We’ll still buy our fix of Midnight Graham Crunch from local supermarkets, but an impulse scoop topped with an Izzy scoop are history.
