Our dream is growing. Izzy’s new building – a purpose-built ice cream kitchen designed by award-winning Minnesota architect David Salmela – is taking shape across and up the Mississippi in a lot just across Gold Medal Park from the Guthrie Theatre. According to mapping software, the construction site is less than five miles away from 2034 Marshall.

But this project is a quantum leap for an ice cream business. Since Jeff and Lara started the business twelve years ago, they have been discovering and creating the best ways to make and distribute fantastic ice cream. As this process has evolved and the business has grown, the dream of a facility built just to make ice cream has expanded and become more urgent.

The current location was never intended as an ice cream kitchen; the original store, where the retail scooping cabinet still is today, contained ice cream making and sales volume for the first couple of years. Soon we started annexing new spaces – to the east, downstairs, and, earlier this year, to the west. While we have never compromised our quality, we also have not had the most efficient or worker-friendly settings for our business; nor, with all the mixed usage of these spaces, have our retail customers benefited from Izzy’s purest dedication to their experience, which has had to share traffic patterns with production and wholesale.

Izzy’s wanted to design, build, and own a facility that embodies the total commitment to quality and excellence that Jeff and Lara have shown since starting the business. Building a new ice cream kitchen and shop is not an undertaking for the faint-hearted or the unmotivated, and it is usually not something done by small businesses like Izzy’s. Renting space, as we have been doing, is the norm. But Izzy’s production needs have grown beyond the Marshall Avenue location’s capacity. So, in order to fulfill those needs, Jeff and Lara moved ahead; they acquired the parcel of land in early 2012 from the city of Minneapolis, funding was secured over the summer, and the ground was broken in September.