At last night's city council meeting, the council agreed to provide a grant of $150,000 to help the restaurant owners with initial setup costs. The money comes from a job creation and business incentive grant program and will help create 6 new full time jobs and 4 part time jobs.
Restaurant owners will be spending $285,000 for set up and have received a contribution of $94,500 from their landlord.
It hasn't been easy to find a tenant to fill that location, which has sat empty for 2 years. City officials hope the restaurant will bring in more foot traffic to Village West, helping neighboring businesses that have struggled.
This project highlight a problem with redevelopment: when the government plans a project, & cherry picks a developer, if they choose incorrectly, they may interfere with the competitive aspects that would come with private development. This Tolkin Group has only done one other large scale shopping center; it's obvious they are not experts...by the vacancies in their project.
ReplyDeleteA Restaurant there is NOT the ideal choice. A book store would have been much more desirable. Grab a coffee, check out a movie, browse the book store. If the restaurant has a patio w. alcohol?, are people going to be out there chillin & drinking....there goes the neighborhood square thing................Please no big screen t.v.'s!
+ it's so obvious they're cherry picking the projects to receive the grant......have you seen the program advertised anywhere?
Just what Claremont needs....another restaurant!!! All the planners seem to think about is sales tax....
More $ to the Village Expansion!!!! Goes to show you the prob.'s with redev........