A new Italian restaurant planned for downtown Aurora, which is receiving incentives from the city, could be opening later than expected.
The restaurant, set to be located in the 3,200-square-foot building at 7 S. Broadway, is planned to be an Italian osteria with pasta made on site and wood-fired pizza. It is being developed by St. Charles-based Frontier Development, LLC, in partnership with a restaurant group owned by Chris and Megan Curren, who own The Graceful Ordinary in St. Charles.
The Aurora City Council next week will consider a change to a redevelopment agreement for the restaurant that would extend the project timeline by about two and a half months. The change, which was discussed at Tuesday’s City Council Committee of the Whole meeting, would push the grand opening date from March 2025 to June 2025 at the latest.
In May of last year, aldermen approved $827,094 in incentives for the restaurant. Half of the incentives will be in the form of a grant while the other half will be in the form of a forgivable loan, according to a staff report included in Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting agenda.
Under that agreement, the restaurant partnership would pay for the rest of the renovation, which has a total estimated cost of around $1.65 million. The partnership is also buying the building from the city for $100,000.
The sale of the building was originally planned to take place by the end of last June, but under the new timeline that will be considered by the Aurora City Council, the plan is now to close on the property by the end of this month, according to the staff report.
Under the new timeline to be considered, construction on the building is also planned to start no later than the end of this month and be finished by the end of May, the staff report said. The current agreement planned for construction to start in November and be completed by the end of February.
According to the staff report, the project’s timeline is being pushed back because of the city’s review of the project’s plans. The FoxWalk Design Committee approved the project’s elevations on Dec. 18, and the Aurora City Council approved on Dec. 17 a license agreement that will allow the restaurant to place outdoor seating in the nearby city-owned Skinny Park.
The proposed new timeline plans for building permits to be approved by the end of March, while the current timeline planned to have those permits approved by the end of last September, the staff report said.
In addition to the changes in the project timeline, the proposed amendment to the redevelopment agreement would also reassign the agreement’s rights and responsibilities to a newly-formed legal entity known as 7 South, LLC, instead of the previous Frontier Development, LLC.
David Dibo, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, said at Tuesday’s meeting that such a change was already written into the original agreement, and this is “very typical” for developers to do.
“The key thing to know in an assignment, any assignment, is, what are the responsibilities?,” Dibo said. “So, the responsibilities that the developer promised you — for instance, his guarantee of his obligations and so on — that continues even though this is being assigned from one entity to the next.”
Another proposed change to the agreement that will be considered is the assignment of collateral from the developer to a lender for construction financing, according to the staff report. Dibo said that, when a lender gets involved, they typically want to know that they have the right to place a lien on the property if needed.
Ald. John Laesch, at-large, asked Dibo if the city was at risk of losing Skinny Park if the developer didn’t make payments to the lender, but Dibo said that the city cannot lose the park because the developer does not own it.
Also, when working with a developer as “substantial” as this one, they sometimes get a loan or they sometimes put their own money in, according to Dibo. The important thing to ask is whether or not the developer is personally guaranteeing the loan, which in this case they are, he said.
“We really don’t have any risk,” Dibo said.
Without objection from any alderman, the item was placed on the consent agenda of the next Aurora City Council meeting, which is planned for Tuesday, Jan. 14. Typically, the consent agenda is used for routine or non-controversial items that are all approved with one vote and without discussion instead of needing to vote on and talk about each individual item.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
