The City of Blue Springs recently announced Amazon plans to open a delivery center in Blue Springs. The delivery center would be located at 2400 NE Coronado Drive, in the former Haldex facility.
     “We are thrilled to announce that Amazon is coming to Blue Springs,” said Blue Springs Mayor Carson Ross. “This facility will not only bring jobs to Blue Springs but it also fills a vacant industrial building in our community. We are proud to see companies like Amazon investing in our community and creating more opportunities for our residents.”
     The existing facility is approximately 70,000 square-feet and is currently being remodeled to accommodate Amazon’s process of receiving and sorting product for final delivery to customers.
    A 30,000 square-foot overhead canopy will be constructed to the rear of the building for loading. An additional 357 parking spaces will also be added to the rear and side of the building for van parking.
     “We look forward to becoming part of the fabric of the Blue Springs community and are thrilled to be able to expand our operations in Missouri,” said Nikki Wheeler at Amazon. “Amazon is a great place to work and grow professionally. We’re grateful for the support we’ve received from local and state leaders and look forward to creating new, full-time jobs for the local community.”
     With its location just outside Grain Valley city limits, traffic impacts on nearby residential areas and wear on Grain Valley roads are a concern.
     Reached for comment on the development and projected traffic impacts, Grain Valley Community Development Director Mark Trosen stated the City “did not have any conversations with Blue Springs or have we been a part of any discussions/planning of the Amazon facility.”
     Grain Valley Mayor Chuck Johnston commented on the development at the April 12th Board of Aldermen meeting.
     “There’s already a lot of people with concerns about traffic. I addressed that with Mr. Murphy (City Administrator Ken Murphy) tonight, and we are going to try to make contact with Amazon to see what we can get them to do, because I’m real concerned (about delivery trucks on R.D. Mize).”
     Valley News reached out to the City of Blue Springs for details on projected traffic impacts. Per a study done for project, the following is expected at the site:
34 AM peak hour trips (one truck, 33 passenger) and 36 PM peak hour trips(two trucks, 34 passenger) are projected;
157 total vehicles are projected for the Weekday Average Daily Traffic (46 trucks, 111 passenger);
Line haul truck deliveries are anticipated daily, primarily between the hours of 10:00pm and 8:00am.
 
Trip distribution is anticipated as follows:
35% to/from the west along I-70;
5% to/from the east along I-70;
10% to/from north along Adams Dairy Parkway;
35% to/from south along Adams Dairy Parkway;
5% to/from west along Coronado;
10% to/from east along Coronado.
     The facility will operate 24/7 to support delivery of packages to customer locations between 11:00am and 9:00pm.
     Amazon plans to be fully operational by the end of 2021. The company expects to start hiring about two months before the facility opens. Those interested in jobs should visit https://buff.ly/2PIwliY.
 

​     Returning to Council Chambers after holding several meetings virtually, the Board of Aldermen moved through several resolutions and ordinances, including an ordinance which would have approved a conditional use permit to operate a portable asphalt plant on approximately 14.3 acres located at the northeast corner of McQuerry and Seymour roads.      
    Capital Paving, the business requesting the permit, reported trucks would be turning at a rate of 125 turns every 24 hours, meaning 125 trucks would have entered and exited the site in a 24-hour period, 7 days a week.
    Citing concerns over the wear and tear to McQuerry and adjoining roads, and disruption to nearby residential areas, no member of the board seconded the motion to allow the resolution to move forward for a second reading. City staff had not recommended approval, and the Planning and Zoning Commission had sent the resolution to the Board with several recommended conditions.
     In other business, the Board approved fireworks permits for the Grain Valley Band Parents Association and the Grain Valley Partnership and approved an amended resolution appointing James Hofstetter to the Grain Valley Planning and Zoning Commission to fill an unexpired term vacated by Paul Loving.
     The board will meet for its next regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, April 26, 2021 at 7:00pm in the Council Chambers at City Hall.
 

     While Kansas City is still known as "the BBQ Capital of the World, some would argue for Lockhart, Texas or Memphis, Tennessee. 
     Known as the “father of Kansas City barbecue” and dubbed the “Barbecue King," Henry Perry sold slow-smoked meats wrapped in newspaper for 25 cents in the Garment District in the early 1900s. He opened the city’s first barbecue restaurant in an old trolley barn, according to the Barbecue Hall of Fame. Perry trained Charlie Bryant, who took over the restaurant when the BBQ “father” died in 1940.
     Bryant passed the torch to his brother Arthur in 1946. Arthur added sweetness to Perry’s original barbecue sauce. The sauce helped put Arthur Bryant’s on the map. No less than four US presidents have eaten at Bryants.
 

​     As a nearly lifelong resident of Grain Valley and one who attended twelve years of school in the same two-story brick schoolhouse where my parents graduated in 1932, I am astounded. But then, as I think back over those past many years, I realize that like our community, most of the growth has occurred in the past twenty-five years.
     In January 1996, the high school moved from Main Street to the present location on Eagles Parkway. Many of you will remember the first phase of that building housed the middle school. The second phase included athletic facilities and by the fall of 1996, the high school plus eighth graders, about 475 students attended school there. The middle school campus on Main Street housed fourth through seventh graders, about 480 students and Matthews Elementary was used for kindergarten through third grade. In total, the district had approximately 1,400 students, doubling the number just 10 years earlier. In 1996, more that 200 housing permits were issued.
     Twenty-five years ago, in April 1996, the bond issue was passed to build the second elementary school. Sni-A-Bar Elementary was, of course, built on the campus with the high school. Since then the Early Childhood Center, two more elementary schools, two middle schools, and numerous additions to the senior high school have been added. And enrollment has increased by more than 300%.
     Twenty-five years ago baseball, softball, and wrestling were “new” sports. Grain Valley was playing nine varsity sports in the Show-Me West Conference with Butler, Holden, Pembroke Hill, St. Mary’s and Sherwood. Today, Grain Valley is one of the 27 schools in the Kansas City Suburban Conference and they participate in 17 varsity sports, band, choir, cheer and dance, speech and debate, and Scholar Bowl. And, they have their own broadcasting studio with GVTV!
     Twenty-five years, in the fall of 1996, all of the classrooms throughout the district were air conditioned for the first time. The district has a “vision” for an aggressive program in the future to make the internet available to all high school students. I can only imagine what a COVID-19 outbreak would have looked like twenty-five years ago!
     A few years ago, my brother and his wife were visiting from Florida. I drove them around the district to see all of the new additions. From the Pink Hill Campus on the North to Stony Point on the South, we saw the administration building (originally the home of my high school classmate Nancy Norris), North Middle School, the Early Childhood Center, Prairie Branch, Matthews, Stony Point Elementary and Middle School, Sni-A-Bar, Moody Murry Stadium, the tennis courts, the softball and baseball complex, the greenhouse, the athletic building, and the Transportation Center.
     But only once did he ask me to stop and take a picture. He was “blown away” by the two semi-trailers that haul the equipment for the Marching Eagles! In 1961, the year he graduated there were 11 members in the band. Times change!
 

​     Our fascination with having a space all our own and getting away from it all begins when we are kids, when we still have little reason to even escape the world. And yet at those early ages we are fort fanciers, treehouse seekers, and bolt-hole builders (more on this fascinating term to come…).
     One of the best memories I have of my dad was him crawling through a tunnel of boxes with my toddler daughter, completely forgetting the back troubles that had hounded him for years.  They rested somewhere deep inside the boxes and requested snack deliveries from us peasants around them.
    Just a short few years later my daughter cried when I sold some old ladder back dining room chairs with knobs that were perfect for making a beautiful canopy from a filmy opaque curtain I had tried to discard. “Where will I hook the clothespins?” she said desperately.
   She typically built her fortress right in front of the television and declared it off limits to the rest of us. That pieced together palace hosted many a tea party.
     I can’t say that I blame her. I myself have been a refuge seeker, way back into childhood summers. New appliances meant joy for mom, and for us it meant the best tunnel and hideout ever, as we toppled the boxes to their sides, filled them with expensive throw pillows and grabbed flashlights to enhance the mood. I draped sheets off the edge of the bunk bed my sis and I shared to enclose myself when it was my week for the bottom bunk.
    In our back yard, a chain link fence was the perfect start for our lean-to tents and hideaways. My dad’s old army blanket was the best ground cover, and then all we needed was a quilt, a sheet, even some plastic to create the triangle into which we would burrow ourselves for hours, hiding away from the world, fortified with Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries.
     I was fascinated with movies where there were hideaways, like Swiss Family Robinson and Blue Lagoon. To this day, one of my favorite movie scenes is from Step Brothers when Brennan and Dale retreat to their treehouse to escape a mean brother.
     If you have seen Step Brothers you get it, and if you haven’t seen it, it’s a good laugh at the end of a lousy week. Truthfully, I am still mad at Greg, Peter, and Bobby for not letting their Brady Bunch sisters share the club house. I hold grudges.
     By the time I was a pre-teen, you would think the hideaway fascination would have stopped, but not for me. Across the road from my grandparents’ farm lived Natalie, a friend we only got to see on our twice or three-time yearly visits.  She and Sally were our best buddies away from home, and while they might have enjoyed visiting us in the city, we thought nothing was better than a trip to the farm.
     Natalie’s four wheeler took us down dirt roads on the bottom land, and one day I noticed a house off in the distance, a bit dilapidated but intriguing. A family that worked for Natalie’s dad on their farm had once lived there. 
     We headed over to it, and opened the door, despite the fact that looking back, just like I am 110% certain that leggings are not my best look, I am also 110% certain we were not supposed to have been in it. 
      Some pretty dusty and ragged furniture and rugs were still in place. My vivid imagination had us all wearing head scarves, sweeping, mopping, and dusting until it was spic and span, and then spending the night there. 
     A racoon or some animal that had taken up residence ran from a closet we pulled open, scared me enough to scream, and quickly snapped me out of my daytime reverie.  But for a blissful moment, I thought we had found our bolt-hole (still promising more on this later…is the anticipation building?).
     It is possible that desiring a hideaway is a family trait. My mom recalls wishing her father would build her a playhouse when she was a girl, but alas, the months to relax are few and far between for the farmer, and he never got it done.
      He chose instead to build beautiful walnut clocks, which have been a much more transportable and lovely memory of his carpentry skills than a roughed out playhouse would have been. But when I talked about a little hideaway for my daughter, Mom was just as excited at the prospect as we were.
     My nephew may have inherited a little of the bolt-hole desire (there is that funny word again… I wonder when she will explain it, readers are surely thinking…).  My sister has a lovely back yard, filled with all things blooming and green. When we visited one day, they had added a garden shed.
     Sis is happy with her hands in the dirt, and I think she imagined the shed filled with shelves of pots and trowels and other garden necessities (I am out of descriptive words here because gardening gives me metaphorical and physical hives…). But my nephew had other ideas.
     The next time we saw the shed, it had a bunk bed built in to the side, and he had officially claimed it. At first, it was furnished with a leaking bean bag and an old rug. The following time, they had gotten it wired for electricity, and he had plugged in an old lamp, quite the ambience.
     What followed were some serious decorating gaffes, like a Kansas Jayhawk banner (he is adorable but has terrible taste in sports teams), and some LED lights tacked around the ceiling to wall joist.
    He and his buddies had countless overnights there, their suburban camping experience, escaping their tyrant parents, and no doubt eating junk food until they fell asleep, LED lights blazing.
    My poor husband appeared to have outgrown the need for a bolt-hole (see now, you are just used to seeing this crazy word…) much earlier than the rest of us. When I asked him to construct a three poled tee-pee looking contraption for our daughter for the yard one summer, he thought I had lost my mind.
     “She has her whole room to herself,” he said. When I tried to explain that it needed to be a little smaller and cozy, her offered her closet. Not the same, I protested, and after I purchased the lumber and brought it home, pretending I would just build it myself, he caved. 
     When he climbed inside the finished tee-pee with her, his feet sticking out, my heart melted.  When summer ended, we couldn’t part with the tee-pee just yet and brought it inside. She was at a friend’s for an overnight once, and I came home to find he and the dog sound asleep in the tee-pee.
     I made enough noise to allow him to pretend to be awake, and he claimed he was looking for a flashlight they had left in there, but I still believe he was stepping back in time to his fort building days for just a moment.
    Maybe right when some of us adults were ready to let go of the whole hideaway thing, She Sheds became the rage.  Moms all over the globe were claiming a space in their back yard and decorating that space in outrageous ways, lighting up Pinterest and home improvement magazine covers.  Sheryl’s She Shed was even the subject of a funny insurance commercial.
     If you are driving behind me as I pass a lot where they are selling tiny homes and sheds, please move on by. I will be rubbernecking until I cause a wreck.
     I am busy visualizing what shrubs or perennials I will have my sister plant around my new She Shed. But big girl dreams die, too.
     My homeowner’s association prohibits me from having a fine looking She Shed. But the one in my mind has a big window that looks out over the acreage we don’t own, and my easel, where I use acrylic and other mediums to paint, never has to be folded and put away. 
     In another corner, I have a cozy day bed for when I tire of my artistic pursuits and take a nap, from which no one wakes me and asks me if we have any pretzels or cheese or milk (wouldn’t you know where to look for milk, for Pete’s sake?) or where I put their one good pair of black athletic shorts.
     When I was watching the adorable series Grace and Frankie, even Frankie, who lives in a beautiful beach home that is another of my dreams had her own bolt-hole, which I suppose it is finally time to describe.
    The English coined the word bolt-hole, and used lovely Englishy sounding words like nook, and harborage and sanctuary and refuge and lair to describe it. I first read about a bolt-hole in a flowery gardening magazine that my sis probably subscribed me to, hoping to convert me.
     I was intrigued by the title, and then more intrigued by the author’s words.  She actually purchased a home with a little secret passageway about which her husband knew nothing.
    As they renovated and refurbished their country estate, she saved scraps of wood and building materials to shore up her bolt-hole. She worked on it when the kids were at school and her hubby at work.  She presented it to them with great fanfare one rainy afternoon and announced she was spending some time ensconced there while they all stayed away.
    It was the best piece of non-fiction I had ever read, though not enough to keep me subscribed to the magazine. I was teaching English at the time I saw the article, and I shared it with my students as a writing prompt.
     After we got past the muffled giggles when I discovered that bolt-hole sounded a lot like butthole to them, we talked about personal space. What would your retreat look like?  Why do you need one? I received some of the best writing I had read from them, all of us just wanting our own space.
      I think as a writer, I will likely need a bolt-hole to escape with my thoughts. Stay tuned for the reveal, if I ever emerge from it.
    
     Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 
    
 
 
 
 
 

​by Megan Callahan, Hy-Vee Corporate Dietitian
 

     Spring into healthy habits by making Tilapia Tacos this week! Stop by your Hy-Vee seafood department for sustainably raised Rainforest tilapia.
    Hy-Vee’s Responsible Choice program ensures top-notch, quality seafood where the best aquaculture practices are used to protect seafood ecosystems. Tilapia is a versatile, mild-flavored white fish, making it a family favorite. It’s easy to bake, grill, pan-sear or air-fry.
 
Four easy ways to cook Tilapia:
 
Bake: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a foil-lined baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Pat tilapia fillets dry and season tilapia as desired. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until fish flakes with a fork and reaches 145 degrees F.
 
Grill: Brush fish with olive oil and season as desired. Place on greased grilling screen and grill over medium-high heat for 4 to 5 minutes or until fish flakes with a fork, turning once halfway through.
 
Pan-Sear: Pat fish dry and dip in seasoned flour mix. Sear in a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes per side or until crust is golden and fish flakes with a fork.
 
Air-Fry: Coat fillets with seasoning as desired. Air-fry at 375 degrees F for 5 to 10 minutes or until fish reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees F, turning once halfway through.
 
     With your health top of mind, eat seafood at least twice each week and connect with a Hy-Vee dietitian to enroll in programs to help you reach your nutrition goals.
     Programs include virtual or in-person nutrition store tours about heart-health or diabetes (more topics available) or individual nutrition counseling to discuss your personal nutrition needs or Healthy Habits menu program, all with weekly accountability check-ins. You’ve only got one body, so take care of it and keep it a top priority.
     Try this recipe for your next taco night.
    The information is not intended as medical advice. Please consult a medical professional for individual advice.
 

​     Outside of lettuce or other types of leafy greens, peas are one of the early season garden goodies I look forward to every year. While some people might find the shelling of peas a tedious task, I prefer it to snapping beans and find it rather satisfying to ‘zip’ open the pod to get to the treasure inside.
     For most purposes, peas may be classified as garden or English peas, snow peas, and sugar snap peas. English peas are further divided into smooth or wrinkled seed varieties. Smooth-seeded varieties are starchier, while wrinkled varieties are sweeter and are commonly used for home and commercial growing. 
     Snow peas are meant to be harvested as flat, tender pods before the peas inside develop at all. Sugar snap peas have been developed from garden peas to have low-fiber pods that can be snapped and eaten along with the slightly mature peas inside. The starchier smooth-seeded varieties are used to produce ripe seed kernels that are fractured to be used to make split-pea soup. The Southern pea, or cowpea is an entirely different vegetable that is planted and grown in the same manner as beans and legumes.
     In the mid 1900’s, studies by Gregor Mendel working with seven characteristics of pea plants (plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color) laid the foundation for modern genetics by identifying dominant and recessive traits in organisms.
     Peas are the seed of the Pisum sativum plant, which originated in the Mediterranean region of Greece, Syria & Turkey. They are a frost-hardy, cool-season vegetable grown wherever a cool season of sufficient duration exists. Today, most production occurring outside of the United States is in colder regions like Canada, Russia, England, and France. The highest producing states in the US are Washington, Montana, and North Dakota.
     No matter how you roll them, peas are nutrient-dense packages of carbohydrates, protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals (especially iron, potassium, folate and vitamins A and K). A half-cup of cooked green peas contains 4 grams of protein, 4 grams of fiber, 12 grams of carbohydrate, and 641 IU of vitamin A.
     On the flip side, peas also contain phytic acid and lectins, which are often referred to as anti-nutrients, that may interfere with nutrient absorption and promote bloating in some people. To minimize these effects keep serving sizes to around 1/3 to ½ cup, eat them fully cooked instead of raw, and try sprouted or fermented preparations.
     Peas can be enjoyed alone as a side dish, or added into soups, stews, or salads. Green peas can even be baked (tossed with a little olive oil and spices) on a baking sheet for a healthy, crunchy snack. Combining fresh peas with grape tomatoes, the pasta dish below can be served warm as a hearty main dish or chilled as a salad by thinning the cheese mixture with lemon juice.
    Denise Sullivan is a Nutrition and Health Education Specialist for MU Extension in the Urban West Region, serving Jackson and Platte Counties. For research-based nutrition and food safety information and programs, visit https://extension.missouri.edu/counties/urban-west-region
 

​     I’m always looking at other people’s yards and admiring their gardens, trees, and flowering shrubs. If I see an attractive plant that is new to me, I try to figure out what it is, if it will grow in my yard, and where I can get one.
This spring, take some time to enjoy the flowering trees and shrubs in your neighborhood, nearby parks, even in the woods and green spaces around you.
     If you see some you like, now is a great time to figure out what they are and if they will grow in your yard. Spring is also a good time to plant new flowering trees and shrubs to enjoy for years to come. Here are several spring-flowering trees and shrubs that grow well in western Missouri: