New Cafe In Mounds Combines History With Revitalization

A new cafe in Mounds is taking an old building and making it new, while still keeping many of its original parts.

The people who own Cafe 75 in Mounds bought an old building in downtown that was piled high with antiques. Now, it’s a cafe that serves hundreds of people. John Mozingo works in Mounds and stopped by the cafe to pick up his lunch. He loves seeing new businesses come to town.

"Mounds is exploding,” said Mozingo. “And it's a really nice community full of great people, and we really need to support local business, especially in the small towns."

A couple of years ago, the restaurant was a building filled to the roof with overstocked items that were sold in flea markets. Kyle Rackley and his family have cleaned out the building, sold some of the items, and used the rest, to decorate the restaurant.

"It just really feels neat to be part of the history now,” said Rackley. “Because what we're doing now makes us a part of the future history, and we have so many people, whether old, young, been here their whole lives, just moved here, everybody says the same thing. 'It's so great that you're preserving this and doing this."'

Preserving this history, while making the downtown area more modern, is important to Rackley. This is all organic, not planned, nobody in the town said hey let's do this or this, it's just small little things happening here and there," said Rackley.

Mozingo hopes others who live or work around Mounds will take time to visit small businesses like Cafe 75.

"Reach out to people in your life that are starting businesses,” said Mozingo. “A lot of people had to shut down in the last few years, and it's really important that we remember what this country was founded on, which is small business."

The project is far from over the owners are still cleaning out and renovating other parts of the building to expand.