Business

Last year challenged us, not just globally and nationally, but, especially, locally. We know what happened here with the businesses shutting down and stay-at-home demands. Compounded by our local fires, we witnessed firsthand how small local towns band together and support their own. I...

Mario Ibarra and Raffaele Cristallo, co-owners of the beloved Ben Lomond restaurant, Casa Nostra, opened a new location in Scotts Valley this week. After nine delicious years off Highway 9 and months of hard work converting their new location, their dishes will be available for...

The Scotts Valley Chamber of Commerce put on a Holiday Passport Event on Small Business Saturday, Nov. 28. More than 100 families traveled throughout commercial Scotts Valley to 36 local businesses in a safe and spirited fashion. At each business, households received a stamp, children...

As the fog began to envelop the coastal areas of Santa Cruz County Tuesday evening, the sun beamed, uninterrupted, on a building up the hill that, from a distance, looked like there could be aircraft stationed inside. A remote-controlled copter buzzed about the open field...

Though a Jan. 12 webinar about federal Covid-relief funding for local businesses was short and to the point, Scotts Valley City Councilman Randy Johnson still found time to look back on the early days of the pandemic. “Does anyone remember spraying the mail that came...

In this final series, I speak with Jason Borgen, the Chief Technology Innovation Officer at the Santa Cruz Office of Education (SCCOE), and with two local businesses, BraLisa and The Gather Community.  In this concluding segment of our three-part series on AI in Small Town...

On one of my regular hikes with friends, I mentioned I was looking for another business to feature in this column. They suggested Spanky’s. I had eaten there before, but not enough to know much about Ashley Parry, the owner since 2013. Lucky me—I...

The Scotts Valley Kiwanis Club on Feb. 12 presented Norma Garcia, the owner of Auntie Mame’s, with a $950 check to replace outdoor canopies destroyed by a windstorm. According to Kiwanis President Ray Gorski a member reached out to Garcia after the Jan. 18 storm....

A Boulder Creek trash and recycling collector that hadn’t been paying the money it owed the County of Santa Cruz—or keeping up with regulations—has lost the right to work in Santa Cruz County. The owner of Kunz Valley Trash, 66-year-old Jack Kunz, says he’ll now...

Enrico Zampieri, 41, grew up in Padua, Italy, and studied political science in Bologna. As an impressive swell pounds the shores of the Monterey Bay, he’s here in the Santa Cruz Mountain foothills, near the laboratory for Bent Dime Winery in Scotts Valley, which...