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  • Wally Boyer says moving out of the long-time Jake’s Pizza location and watching the building being torn down will be bittersweet. Jake’s will move this spring to the former Green Mill location. Pat Christman

    Jake's

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February 9, 2010

Jake's is on the move

By Tim Krohn The Free Press

MANKATO — Wally and Brenda Boyer will be moving their Jake’s Pizza into the former Green Mill spot this spring — a relocation that will bring mixed feelings.

“It’s going to be bittersweet,” Wally said. “Brenda and I had our wedding reception in the basement of Jake’s. All our family’s graduations and birthdays were held there. It’ll be tough to watch it get torn down.”

The move is prompted by CVS Pharmacy purchasing the Jake’s building, the strip mall next door and the former Maggie’s restaurant building behind Jake’s. The buildings will be razed and a CVS built.

Boyer said they will be remodeling the Green Mill, located just down Stadium Road and nearer the MSU campus. Green Mill closed last year. He hopes to be open in early May, with the business shut down just a few days in-between the move.

They will gain more than 50 seats and a patio in the new location. The bar will be removed — Jake’s will continue to sell 3.2 beer — a private banquet room included, and the kitchen will undergo a major remodeling with slate ovens brought in to make pizza.

“We’re still going to focus on the same business, the pizza,” Boyer said. “We might add a few things to the menu later, but we’ll take it slow and get situated first.”

And, some very important memorabilia will be moved to the new location.

“We’ll move all our Vikings stuff. We want to keep that feeling of Jake’s. I think people will like it.”

The Vikings connection to Jake’s goes back as long as the team has held its summer training camp in Mankato for more than 40 years.

“Carl Eller, Jim Marshall, Chuck Foreman, Tarkenton they all came in. Back in those days 20 or 25 of them would come in after practice and have a cold one,” Boyer said. “We were pretty much it up here. We were the end of the world.”

Over the years, the offensive line stayed loyal to Jake’s, Boyer said, but in recent years some of the big name players found new training camp hangouts.

“This last year or so we’ve been getting them back, which is nice. We had Harvin, Adrian Peterson, Hutchinson, Jared Allen all coming in.”

Jake’s was long run by the late Vern “Sarge” Carstensen and his wife, Norma, with locations in several communities. The family also owns the strip mall and former Maggie’s building.

When they retired, their children and their spouses took over, including their daughter and son-in-law Brenda and Wally Boyer, daughters Diane Halverson, and son and daughter-in-law Brian and Elaine Carstensen.    

Boyer, 56, said he started working at Jake’s part-time in 1974, ran Highland Liquors for a time, and returned full-time to Jake’s in 1988.

He said they looked at purchasing land east of the Kwik Trip to build a new Jake’s, but the cost was too high. “The Green Mill spot was nice and just sitting there.”

CVS is planning on taking possession of the property May 1, but they have an option to extend the timeline, Boyer said.

The Mankato City Council this week gave CVS final approval for its project. 

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