Tiny WEQY Radio used to broadcast music and news with a decidedly East Side flavor from spartan studios on E. 7th Street in Saint Paul.

It's still on the radio waves. But with its license assumed this summer by the nonprofit Center for Broadcast Journalism — and its move to glitzy new facilities downtown — this low-power FM station has become part of a much grander plan.

The goal? Train and develop journalists of color to better represent the communities that the radio station and the center serve.

The Saint Paul-based Center for Economic Inclusion (CEI) is expanding nationwide thanks to a new $1 million grant from Google and a $600,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, officials announced Monday.

The Minnesota nonprofit is expanding its equity, job creation, data and corporate-diversity partnership work with Target, 3M, U.S. Bank, Best Buy, Allianz and Fairview Health to nine new markets in Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio and Virginia.

The move should reach another 160 employers and help 10,000 managers deepen racial diversity in their workplaces to share wages, training, promotions, homeownership and other economic opportunities more equitably.

The aquamarine floor that spans Crasqui, the restaurant, may at first recall the paint job of polished, psychedelic-looking bowling ball. This is not by design. "Try looking at it after a few drinks," our server suggests.

We do, and it clicks. The undulating swirls dance like seawater lapping against the white leather furniture, the color of which supposedly resembles sand. Crasqui, it turns out, is named after an island off the coast of Venezuela, where the restaurant's chef/owner, Soleil Ramirez, was raised.

But you won't need to be in any stupor to imagine how the space, inside a nondescript building off the Wabasha Street bridge in downtown Saint Paul, could match this postcard destination, 3,000 miles south. Food alone does the job. Compellingly, too.

Slice Brothers Pizza is expanding again, this time into downtown Saint Paul. The new shop will be the New York-style pizzeria's fifth location since it opened in Northeast Minneapolis in 2021.

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