Big Foot Liquor to open soon

LYONS – Big Foot Liquor, located at 447 Main St., will open soon. The new liquor store owned by Crysty and Steve McCain will carry a full selection of wines, beer, mixes, spirits, liquor and other items.
Crysty McCain will run the business. “We are still waiting for the wine to arrive and then we have to enter the inventory in the computer,” said Crysty. “We hope to be open this weekend.”
The shop is about 800 square feet. The refrigerator cases are currently filled with beer of all kinds including the traditional Bud, Miller, Michelob and also craft beers, including brews from the Oskar Blues Brewing Co., New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins and many others.
“We are taking requests from our customers,” said Crysty, pointing to a clipboard at the end of the counter where customers can fill out requests for their spirit of choice.
The name Big Foot came from her sons. One Halloween Crysty’s dad dressed up as big foot and ran round scaring kids. The McCain kids, Jared and Joe, were so impressed that they came up with the name Big Foot to call the liquor store.
Summer hours will start at 9 a.m. and run until about 10 p.m. or 10:30 p.m. During the festivals Crysty said the store would be open until midnight. Winter hours will change slightly to a shortened day. “We might have to adjust our hours accordingly,” said Crysty. “We will just see what out customers want.”
The shop will also have cigarettes and pop, but no food, which the license won’t allow. “I would like to do wine tastings here,” said Crysty. “I want this to become the go-to place for wine.” Currently she has some wines from the local winery, Ciatano at the former Rock ‘n River location on Colorado Highway 66 just west of Lyons. The store will also have Cocetti wines from Napa Valley, California. Crysty plans to work closely with the representatives from the Italian winery to help her plan what wines to carry and to help with the display of wines. “We are also going to carry all-natural margarita mixes,” said Crysty.
Crysty is still working as a dental hygienist for Dr. Ted Kawulok in Boulder at Whole Family Dentistry. Steve McCain plans to continue to operate his business Hatrock Excavating. His company works on septic systems, ditch cleaning, driveway repair, water lines, sewer lines and other utility work.
She is putting her passion for dirt bike racing on hold because she will be too busy with her new store. “Bike racing is my passion, but I had to put that on hold after my accident where I injured my shoulder,” said Crysty. “I still hope to do something with it in the future.”
The liquor store will eventually have two or three employees and the McCain’s long-time friend Greg Fitts will be working there. “We will have a machine where we can swipe driver’s licenses to check if they are real of fake and it also tells if the person is old enough to buy alcohol,” said Crysty.
The store has an ATM machine right next to the counter and the cash register is completely computerized and keeps track of the inventory. Steve Simms hooked up the computer/cash register and Crysty said she was very grateful to him for his help.
For more information contact Big Foot Liquor Store at 303-823-9463.

Cilantro Mary hosts Greg Koch, founder of Stone Brewing

LYONS – Wayne and Debbie Anderson, new owners of Cilantro Mary restaurant, will host a craft beer dinner with a special guest Greg Koch, founder and CEO of

Stone Brewing Company from San Diego. The dinner will be held at 6:30 p.m. on June 23 at Cilantro Mary’s on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Main Street. All guests must have reservations and only a few are left. The cost is $50 plus tax and tip.
“We are almost sold out,” said Wayne. “Stone is one of the largest craft breweries in the country. Greg will introduce and talk about each beer telling us how it is paired with food. And we will be the first restaurant to serve their anniversary beer, Stone 14th Anniversary Imperial IPA. These dinners are very popular with foodies and craft beer enthusiasts. Debbie worked for Stone for five years. Stone will be the first craft brewery to open a craft brewery in Europe. The exact location has not been set yet.”
The Andersons bought and opened the restaurant about two months ago. They plan to host a variety of craft beer dinners throughout the year. Beer dinners are similar to wine dinners where food is pared with various craft brews. The craft beer dinners will have a whole new menu created by the Cilantro chefs just for the dinner events.
For those who were squeezed out of the craft beer dinner this time, the regular menu also offers a variety of crowd-pleasers. “The house fried chicken and grilled opah (a white fish) are real crowd pleasers,” said Wayne. “We now have a happy hour menu from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. each day except Tuesday when we are closed, and we have brunch on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.”
A new sign on top of the building says Beer Union, which is symbolic for the Andersons. “A beer union is like a public house or an assembly hall. But it has a double meeting for us because we met through beer when we were both working for craft breweries. Greg Koch married us on the beach on October 11, 2008 in San Diego.”

Rebates for commercial properties utilizing ClimateSmart loans

BOULDER COUNTY – Boulder County is offering rebate incentives for up to 70 percent of the cost of commercial property projects funded by the ClimateSmart Loan Program with a cap of $10,000.
The rebates are funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, through the $25 million Retrofit Ramp-Up grant awarded last month to Boulder County and its partner organizations.
Approximately $12 million is available until July 12 for commercial property owners in Boulder County – including nonprofit organizations – to make energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements under the ClimateSmart Loan Program. The voluntary program provides financing for more than 70 different energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades.
For more information about the rebates, please visit  HYPERLINK “http://www.ClimateSmartLoanProgram.org“ www.ClimateSmartLoanProgram.org, send an email to  HYPERLINK “mailto:climatesmart@bouldercounty.org“ climatesmart@bouldercounty.org, or call 303-441-4565.
The ClimateSmart Loan Program, made possible by the 2008 passage of ballot issue 1A, authorized $40 million in affordable financing to Boulder County residents and business owners that wish to implement energy improvements to their properties. The program generates green-collar jobs and stimulates the local economy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions – a major objective of the countywide Sustainable Energy Plan and long-term goal of carbon neutrality.
Financing obtained through the ClimateSmart Loan Program for commercial property projects is repaid by the property owner throughout a five or ten-year period. Payments are made via a special assessment that is included with the annual property tax bill.
Commercial property owners needing technical or implementation assistance should call Partners for a Clean Environment, or PACE, at 303-786-7223 or visit  HYPERLINK “http://www.pacepartners.com“ www.pacepartners.com. PACE is a partnership of local governments and businesses to encourage and recognize environmental achievement.

La Mariposa plans to create a whole new menu

LYONS – The owners of the Lyons La Mariposa restaurant, Rene and Maria Cervantes, applied to the town board and were granted a modification of premises for the building which they have been remodeling located at 112 East Main St. just east of Lyons on Colorado Highway 66. The restaurant has been closed for several months. “We thought that we would be open again by now,” said Cervantes. “But we are going to do a lot more renovation than we originally planned to do. We decided to change the entrance to the east side of the building and we will use the current entrance on the west side as the new exit. We are going to change about 70 percent of the existing building.”
The newly remodeled restaurant will be called La Mariposa Restaurant and Margarita House. Cervantes said that he does not know when the remodel will be complete. The patio will be moved from the back of the restaurant to the east side of the building which is currently a parking lot.
Cervantes said that at least 50 percent of the menu will change as well. “We were originally doing food from northern Mexico but we are now planning on doing more food items from all over Mexico, from the southern region and the coastal regions. We recently opened, a few months ago, Agave Restaurant in Boulder and that restaurant is very successful. We feature several vegetarian dishes, cilantro rice, different kinds of beans, salsa sides and we are thinking of doing more dishes like that in Lyons. To be honest, we tried this concept about 15 years ago, but it was so new that no one thought that we were serving Mexican food. It was just too new, so we went back to northern Mexican food.”
The Cervantes family has been in the restaurant business for 24 years starting with their restaurant, La Mariposa in Longmont. The La Mariposa in Lyons opened about 18 years ago. They own four restaurants, one in Longmont, Lyons, Boulder (Agave) and a La Mariposa in Denver. When they opened their first restaurant in Longmont, Cervantes was a stone mason. His wife Maria ran the restaurant while he worked as a mason. They have four kids and they all work in their restaurants. Cervantes said he does not know when they will reopen the restaurant in Lyons. “We are working quickly to reopen,” he said.

Lyons Area Chamber of Commerce Elects New Officers

LYONS – On June 14, at the May 20 meeting of the LACC board of directors, a new slate of officers was approved. The new 2010 – 2011 chamber officers are:
Jayne Rhode (Bank of the West): President
JJ Booksh-Asnicar (Certified Massage Therapy): Vice President
Janice Gavan (VisAbility Inc.): Secretary
Steve Kleiner (Financial Frontiers): Treasurer
John O’Brien (O’Brien Consulting LLC): Immediate Past President
The new officers form the Executive Committee of the chamber and will serve From June 2010 to May 2011.

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