By GREG KENNELTY

Staff Writer

Demolition of the storm-damaged McLoones Rum Runner restaurant was completed July 21. Construction is expected to begin on a new building this month, with a projected spring reopening. SEA BRIGHT Vestiges of the Rum Runner remain on the Ocean Avenue site where Tim McLoone hopes a new restaurant will be ready to open its doors to customers by spring.

We demolished the old building on [July 21] and it will probably take about a month to get the property in shape to actually start building, McLoone said.

We have to yank out the old foundation and then do remediating and inspection and bulkheading, too, since when the old dock came apart, it damaged them.

We anticipate sometime in August is when we will be building the new place and we hope to be ready by next spring.

The Sea Bright Planning and Zoning Board unanimously approved the application for the demolition and reconstruction of the restaurant on April 8.

The new, three-story restaurant, which will retain the Rum Runner name, will seat 298 patrons in indoor and outdoor dining areas including a second-floor mezzanine.

The architecture and ambience will reflect McLoones penchant for classic design as interpreted by architectural firm Anderson Campanella.

I know how to design a restaurant on the inside, but we hired them to do the building because I love that Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket look, and they can do that. I just want it to look like it has always been there, he said.

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McLoone looks to spring reopening for Rum Runner

By GREG KENNELTY

Staff Writer

Demolition of the storm-damaged McLoones Rum Runner restaurant was completed July 21, and construction is expected to begin on a new building in August, with a projected spring reopening. GREG KENNELTY/STAFF SEA BRIGHT Vestiges of the Rum Runner remain on the Ocean Avenue site where Tim McLoone hopes a new restaurant will be ready to open its doors to customers by spring.

We demolished the old building on [July 21] and it will probably take about a month to get the property in shape to actually start building, McLoone said.

We have to yank out the old foundation and then do remediating and inspection and bulkheading, too, since when the old dock came apart, it damaged them.

We anticipate sometime in August is when we will be building the new place and we hope to be ready by next spring.

The Sea Bright Planning and Zoning Board unanimously approved the application for the demolition and reconstruction of the restaurant on April 8.

The new, three-story restaurant, which will retain the Rum Runner name, will seat 298 patrons in indoor and outdoor dining areas including a second-floor mezzanine.

The architecture and ambience will reflect McLoones penchant for classic design as interpreted by architectural firm Anderson Campanella.

I know how to design a restaurant on the inside, but we hired them to do the building because I love that Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket look, and they can do that. I just want it to look like it has always been there, he said.

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Rum Runner set for spring reopening

CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio -- The new M Italianrestaurant will begin construction at 22 W. Orange St. this week.

The building, which has been vacant for six years, will get a complete overhaul, with new beams, exposed brick and soft lighting. Owner Bret Adams also plans to build a covered patio with an outdoor fire pit for the new restaurant, which will seat roughly 100 and is expected to open at the end of October.

"We really wanted to take the opportunity to give back to the village. This will be more a labor of love for us," Adams said. "We think we are going to bring a true Italian restaurant to Chagrin."

Adams, who also owns the Burntwood Tavern restaurants, plans to use the other spaces in the building for offices and a glass-blowing studio. The Glass Asylum,currently located in Bratenahl, will occupy part of the space, behind a glass wall.

The building has roughly 35 parking spots, but residents will be able to use the Step North parking garage on North Main Street for additional valet parking.

M Italian will be the first Italian restaurant to open in Chagrin Falls in nearly three years. The village has been without an Italian restaurant since 2011 when Joey's Restaurant burned down on North Main Street.

Owners of Joey's originally had their sights set on the building and had planned to open a new location there. They signed a five-year lease with developers for the building in 2012, but the restaurant never opened. Owners Michael, William and Joseph Leonetti are currently involved in a lawsuit with the developers over another building in Solon.

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M Italian to start construction this week, restaurant set to open in October

The Four Corners Tavern Group operates 10 high-volume venues in Chicago. Its director, Ryan Indovina, offered examples of mistakes that he's seen new restaurateurs make time and again.

Read MoreHot new trends in the restaurant world

"People typically raise just the amount of funding they need to open a restaurant," he said. "They don't always consider that they need a reservoir of cash to run the restaurant for the first three to six months."

He also said that rookie restaurant owners often create unrealistic timelines for their openings.

"Take into consideration lead time for permits, liquor licenses, construction, marketing build-out and more," he said. "These things never happen on time, so build in lots of extra time for unexpected obstacles."

Read More Taking on Starbucks, one cup at a time

He also had some advice that could be considered fitting for any restaurant opening in his home town of Chicago.

"If you're opening in a colder city, make sure to build in enough time so you're not stuck opening in January and February, when no one leaves their house," he said. He also put a lot of stock in picking the correct location.

Read MoreOne-dish restaurants: Just a fad?

"Don't be swayed by a great deal if it's not in a good location," he said. "The perfect location is worth the higher price tag. The restaurant business is the real estate business."

Continued here:
Mistakes to avoid when opening a restaurant

The Baldounis family will serve up a lesson in Greek with the soft opening of their Athenian Restaurant today in north Midland.

With a menu full of Mediterranean staples such as tzatziki-filled gyros and skewered meats, the fine-dining restaurant hopes to bring something new to the Tall City.

Everything is homemade. Everything is done from scratch, said co-owner Tina Baldounis, who grew up eating the food cooked by her native Greek parents. Just try it.

The family owned a similar eatery in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the early 2000s.

After saving money and buying kitchen equipment for the past two years, Baldounis who also has a full-time job at an oilfield services company committed to opening a restaurant to give back to her parents.

This is for them, she said during a tour last Friday. This is for my parents.

A number of construction and equipment issues delayed the opening of Athenian Restaurant, which is located in the northeastern part of the Colonnade at Polo Park shopping center at 4610 N. Garfield St. Suite B11.

The doors will open today, but just for dinner and with limited hours 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. on the weekends she said.

A limited menu will be available as Baldounis hunts down servers and hard-to-find ingredients. Athenian Restaurant is also in the process of obtaining a city beer and wine permit.

I just hope everyone is patient with us, she said, noting theres room for than 100 fine diners in the main room and bar area.

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Athenian Restaurant opens today in north Midland

Chicago's newest harbor at 31st Street has filled less than half its boat slips, but it's about to make a splash.

A floating swimming pool, a pool deck and washroom facilities are under construction, and a floating restaurant is planned for the city's harbor, now in its third season.

In fact, crews removed a few boat slips from the harbor, which opened in 2012, to install the pool, deck and bathroomsall of which are on the same dock.

A harbor manager said that doesn't mean they're getting out of the boat-docking business.

"We are continuing to try to attract more boaters there," said Scott Stevenson, vice president of Westrec Marinas, which manages the city's harbor system.

The pricetag for the new pool and bathrooms is pegged at $1.6 million and was paid for by revenue bonds to be repaid with boater fees.The pool deck will be furnished with lounge chairs and cabanas and the bathrooms operational in the coming days, while the pool is expected to be completed in the next two weeks, Stevenson said.

Boaters who dock at the harbor won't have to pay to use the the pool and bathrooms; rather, use of the facilities are included in their slip fees, Stevenson said. Residents and tourists who don't own boats must fork over $12 for a one-day guest pass or $240 annual membership, he said.

Steps away from the harbor, it's free to dip your toes in the lake at 31st Street beach. But the $12 fee to use the new pool is fair, said Alyce Scott as she sat on the sand. "I would probably try it just to try something different," said Scott, 26, of Hyde Park.

The park district runs dozens of pools across the city and there is no entrance fee to hop in the pools.

Plans are in the works, too, for a restaurant at the harbor. The Chicago Park District, the umbrella city agency that oversees the harbors, is awaiting proposals to design, build and operate the restaurant. There's no pricetag for the restaurant, officials say, but the plan is to build it next to the pool, Stevenson said. The eatery will be open to the public.

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Floating pool in Lake Michigan

TAMPA This is more than a restaurant.

Its Ulele.

In 16 days, the much-anticipated native-inspired restaurant featuring a menu with foods symbolic of the areas pre-European tribal cultures and pioneer days will reveal its charms.

From a strictly physical standpoint, its a 6,800-square-foot, red-brick warehouse with a cathedral ceiling of crisscrossed whitewashed pine beams. A polished concrete floor supports an enormous circular stainless-steel barbacoa grill where Parmesan oysters on the half shell and Berkshire pork chops glazed with guava will roast.

A wooden-stepped staircase dissects the restaurant. It leads to two elevated wooden-floor dining mezzanines that overlook an oyster-shucking station downstairs and a bar with arrowheads and shells embedded in the countertop. Dining room windows provide views of tangerine sunsets over the Hillsborough River, perfect for enjoying chilled Florida avocado soup, fish broiled in kumquat brown butter and crispy pork shank with spicy apple Craisin chutney.

On the buildings north side is a beer garden outside a brewhouse stocked with tall, shiny kettles. Along the southern face, stately palms fan out over a grassy lawn and a spring that empties cool, crystal water into a root beer-colored lagoon where a bronze statue of a mythic native girl will stand watch.

Invisible to customers will be the hopes and ambitions of those who brought the project to life.

Nothing on the menu will hint at 61-year-old restaurateur Richard Gonzmarts burning passion to create Ulele as a legacy for future generations of his family, which first opened Ybor Citys Columbia Restaurant in 1905. Born three blocks away from the water works, he and brother Casey, who together oversee the Columbia Restaurant Group, grew up playing on nearby streets and skiing on the river. The water that comes from the adjacent spring filled the water glasses and pots of their great-grandfathers restaurant and the bottles of the Ybor brewery where he worked before the Columbia came into being.

There will be no plaque commemorating Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorns steering the project toward the Gonzmarts deep pockets so the dilapidated, 112-year-old former city water works building could become a catalyst for urban renewal in Tampa Heights.

And diners wont see the more than $6 million the city spent to refurbish the largely unused Water Works Park into a riverfront playground that will act as a magnet for restaurant patrons. Or that Ulele will provide a destination for walkers, joggers and cyclists on the $4.3 million final leg of the Tampa Riverwalk. Or that the park will be a bellwether for the $7 million restoration of Perry Harvey Sr. Park on the rivers western shore south of Interstate 275.

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Ulele, a restaurant for the next century

New restaurant construction moving forward in Vincennes
News 10 WTHI.

By: WTHI-TV

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New restaurant construction moving forward in Vincennes - Video

One of the commercial construction permits issued in the second quarter was for this Pollo Tropical restaurant on Dunlawton Avenue in Port Orange.

DAYTONA BEACH The number of new home and commercial construction permits issued across Volusia County in the second quarter of the year dipped when compared to the first quarter and the same three-month period a year ago.

However, county officials are taking a wider view of building activity.

In my personal view, one quarter does not a trend make and we need to wait and see for the next quarters, said Rob Ehrhardt, Volusia Countys economic development director, during Fridays quarterly economic development briefing at Daytona Beach International Airport attended by more than 150 people.

Volusia County and its 16 cities issued 280 new single-family home construction permits in the April-through-June quarter, according to data compiled by the economic development division. Thats down 18 percent from the same period a year ago and down 19 percent from the first quarter.

Timing is one reason for the dip, builders said. Permits are usually issued two to three months after a sales contract is signed. Since sales cooled late in the first quarter due to severe bad weather in the Midwest and Northeast, second quarter permit activity took a slight hit.

Residential permit activity for the first half of the year, however, is better than it was a year ago.

There were 628 home construction permits issued January through June. Thats up almost 8 percent from the 582 permits issued in the first six months of 2013. Its also the highest level for the first half of any year since 2008 when 666 permits were issued.

We are not seeing a flattening out, just the opposite. Our sales are up, said Jim Mather, vice president of Paytas Homes in Port Orange.

The homebuilder has sold 58 homes through July, mostly in its Promenade subdivision in New Smyrna Beach. The company sold 65 in all of last year.

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Permit activity, unemployment rate decline in 2nd quarter

Rudy's Diner Bar and Grill is scheduled to open in about six weeks in the former Star City Restaurant building at 1406 Center St. in Bethlehem. (RYAN KNELLER / August 8, 2014)

11:28 a.m. EDT, August 8, 2014

On a recent visit, I learned that husband and wife Olvin and Carla Buezo of Nazareth are having the building gutted and remodeled to house Rudys Diner Bar and Grill (Olvins middle name is Rudy) in about six weeks.

The Buezos, who have operated Franks Italian Restaurant on Route 248 in Lower Nazareth Township for 16 years, are adding new everything, including furniture, flooring and kitchen equipment, Carla Buezos said.

Hours will be 6 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 6 a.m.-midnight Friday through Sunday.

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Diner coming to Bethlehem's former Star City Restaurant