KENDALLVILLE â Noble County restaurateurs and entrepreneurs sampled a taste of the Monte Pisano region of Tuscany, Italy, enjoying food, olive oils and wines in an interactive experience Thursday at The Community Learning Center.
CLC executive director Julia Tipton and international business entrepreneur Lorenzo Bona guided business owners from Ligonier, Kendallville, LaOtto and Albion through a tasting of products produced by small, family-run businesses in Italy.
Bona, an Italian, first came to Kendallville as an AFS exchange student in 1987 at East Noble High School. He liked Kendallville so much that he moved his family here in 2016 from Italy and founded his company, Limestone Economics, with the goal of building economic bridges between cultures and companies. The American company now has representatives in Italy.
KENDALLVILLE â About 20 Kendallville residents brought their questions Thursday night to an informational meeting about a proposed solar field on the former McCray Refrigerator industrial site.
Mayor Suzanne Handshoe hosted the meeting, which featured a panel-style presentation from solar energy experts Eric Hesher and Doug Alhfield of Renewable Energy Systems in Avilla and municipal finance expert Eric Walsh, a CPA and partner in BakerTilly.
The proposed solar field would take up most of the 11-acre McCray site off Wayne Street, one block west of Main Street, stretching from the west end of the property all the way to Mill Street.
The city has been mulling what to do with the lot since the McCray factory burned in a massive fire in June 2018 and the site was cleared. A solar field had been one of the initial ideas, and for a time was thought to be financially infeasible before the city recently got updated costs and financing information.
KENDALLVILLE â A year ago, Kendallville residents were getting their first chance to wander the halls of the former East Noble Middle School.
Many marveled at how much progress had been made in just a few months to transform aging hallways and classrooms once filled with tweens and teens into something new, fresh and â perhaps most surprising to some â modern and fancy.
At the Community Learning Centerâs open house in January 2020, people were getting their first glimpse of how an old school could be given its second life.
Then, in March, came the pandemic.
All the things that the CLC was designed for â classroom learning, workforce skills training, arts and culture programming and public events ranging from speaker series to Gaslight Playhouse performances â were suddenly the type of things that werenât recommended.