Thursday, November 7, 2013

Liquor Advisory Board Meeting

Sat in on part of tonight's Liquor Advisory Board meeting.  A couple of interesting things came out of it.

For the first time in recent memory, the old Spinonis' building will not get gutted for the new restaurant, Flame Eatery and Bar, going in there,  As was commented at the meeting, during the presentation for the liquor license,  a committee member commented that one of the problems prior restaurants had at the location was that each new owner completely gutted and renovated the building to make it the way they visualized it, rather than taking the restaurant layout in place and building on top of it.  By going into the project this way, the owner plans to minimizes his investment and avoid the financial difficulties previous restaurants ran into.

Also, the people behind the reopened club Melange are the same couple that have owned Kaya for over a decade on S. Illinois. Though it had no effect on the LAB approval, the committee did ask them to consider pulling down the walls the previous owner had put up around the outdoor patio.

Finally, from comments by committee members, it appears that  the expansion of beer and wine sales to grocery stores has had an effect on sales though liquor stores in the community, with one member estimating sales in the stores have declined 20-30%.

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