Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Waters

Hope you had a wonderul holiday!!! We look forward to seeing you at the Waters on Monday for a tour of the site. We hope that it will be informative and provide you with some ideas that might be applicable to our redevelopment site in Cloverdale. See you soon!

Monday, November 23, 2009

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

We hope that you have a happy and safe holiday, and that you have much to be thankful for this year! We are thankful for you! As our gift to you - we are passing along our favorite pumpkin pie recipe from Food Network celebrity chef Paula Deen. Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!
River Region Redevelopment


Pumpkin Pie
Recipe courtesy of Paula Deen
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/pumpkin-pie-recipe/index.html

Ingredients:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened 2 cups canned pumpkin, mashed 1 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 egg plus 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten 1 cup half-and-half 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, optional 1 piece pre-made pie dough
Whipped cream, for topping

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place 1 piece of pre-made pie dough down into a (9-inch) pie pan and press down along the bottom and all sides. Pinch and crimp the edges together to make a pretty pattern. Put the pie shell back into the freezer for 1 hour to firm up. Fit a piece of aluminum foil to cover the inside of the shell completely. Fill the shell up to the edges with pie weights or dried beans (about 2 pounds) and place it in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the foil and pie weights and bake for another 10 minutes or until the crust is dried out and beginning to color. For the filling, in a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese with a hand mixer. Add the pumpkin and beat until combined. Add the sugar and salt, and beat until combined. Add the eggs mixed with the yolks, half-and-half, and melted butter, and beat until combined. Finally, add the vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger, if using, and beat until incorporated.
Pour the filling into the warm prepared pie crust and bake for 50 minutes, or until the center is set. Place the pie on a wire rack and cool to room temperature. Cut into slices and top each piece with a generous amount of whipped cream.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Potential Legal Issues at the Alley

Just a quick note about some of the potential legal issues that we spotted at the Alley for your potential new business site. In an effort to help you make a well informed decision on this property, we also included some other issues that should be of interest to you. See below for the partial list of legal issues/considerations - we have also sent you a more detailed list via email and postal mail. Since it is a holiday week, we wanted to be sure that you have ample access to the information we have provided for you. Again, we enjoyed the informative tour of the Alley, and will see you next week at the Waters. Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.


Potential Legal Issues:

  • Building Maintenance: who is responsible for general building repairs? Is there an agreement between building owners? This issue will need to be resolved before purchase of the building (or signing lease agreement)?
  • Are there any additional restrictions on the use of the property - given the current neighboring businesses? (Specifically, the Children's Museum).
  • Are there limits to the use of live music, smells, noise, hours of operation, etc due to the residential units above the future site?
  • If using private donations to fund the project: need to make sure that all finances are properly in place and all SEC regulations are satisfied before proceeding with construction.
  • Security - are individual business owners required to provide a certain amount of security - even though a police sub-station is nearby.
  • Will we need a variance for any changes to the property - maybe extending sidewalk, create a parking/loading zone, etc?
  • We need to have an environmental inspection to ensure that there aren't any environmental concerns as a result of the previous use of the building that is available - or previous use of neighboring buildings. (Train did come through the alley!)
  • There is an existing franchise agreement in the Alley: Will that affect your new business? We may need to train servers to police alcohol entering and exiting the premises - by using unique cups, wristbands, etc.
  • Historical Concerns - If you plan to make any changes to the building that will create some historical issues, we will need to have these resolved with local and federal entities.




Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Dreamland BBQ


The trip downtown went great! The River Region team learned many issues facing downtown redevelopment projects. Great news also, the team found a location in the Alley designated to be a resturaunt that would be an interesting location to possibly invest in.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The Alley

We are looking forward to meeting you at the Alley in downtown Montgomery. We will be talking about the various things the developer had to go through to get the building renovated to support a restaurant and bar.

Downtown Visit in Montgomery, Al


This coming week a visit to the new Dreamland BBQ joint in downtown Montgomery. The group will be discussing issues with renovating.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

We met with a banker this week and we are ready to meet with you to discuss just how much financial disclosure you will have to provide in order to finance this project. We are going to have to sit down and see how much cash you have to put into this project. Most banks now will not lend unless you have the ability to contribute 20 to 30% of the project in cash up front. You are going to have to disclose every aspect of your finances to the bank. The bank is going to have to see that the proposed project will provide at least one and a half times coverage of the aticipated loan payment. We can talk more about this at a later date.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Parking Requirements

Based on our findings - we will likely need a variance for the large amount of parking required at the site. While we will try to mitigate some of the parking requirements by adding trees and green space, we are still facing a similar problem that the A&P development faced. Hopefully, we will be able to work out the same favorable outcome that they did. It was a brilliant idea to allow the residents' parking to be used by the surrounding businesses during the day! Maybe we can work out a similar solution at our site!?!
It is worth mentioning that the Board of Adjustment considered a very similar variance at their meeting last month, and the Board voted in favor of it. While there are no guarantees, this is encouraging information! We have some work ahead of us, but we will find a solution to this problem! We will be in touch soon.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Meeting this afternoon

Hope that you have had a wonderful week so far. We have been working hard on our presentation re: historic and aesthethic regulations. We have prepared the necessary documents for relocating and/or demolishing the building on Parcel 1. Glad that we were able to reschedule Mondays meeting for this afternoon - we look forward to presenting our findings to you. See you soon!