The Aurora City Council on Tuesday evening approved two loans totaling $450,000 to help create a new diner in downtown’s Terminal Building.
The restaurant is set to be owned by chef Jamie Gilmore, an Aurora resident who runs Lizzy J Cafe in Chicago’s Fulton Market District. While Gilmore’s existing restaurant currently focuses on brunch, the diner to be opened in Aurora will also serve lunch and dinner, with a menu based on soul and New-Orleans-based food, and will include a bar, Gilmore previously said.
The Aurora restaurant will be located in the same place as the former Broadway Diner in the first floor of the Terminal Building at the corner of Galena Boulevard and Broadway, which is the same building that holds the Lofts on Broadway.
The two loans for the restaurant were approved unanimously by the Aurora City Council at Tuesday’s meeting.
One of the two loans for this project will go to Urban Equity Properties, which redeveloped the Terminal Building several years ago, and that $200,000 loan is an amendment of the city’s redevelopment agreement with the company.
The loan to Urban Equity Properties is expected to be paid back over 10 years with 5.5% interest and is being guaranteed by the company, according to past reporting.
The city is also loaning $250,000 to the restaurant directly, which will be paid back to the city through sales taxes and food and drink taxes that would come to the city from the property, according to David Dibo, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development.
He said at last week’s City Council Committee of the Whole meeting that Gilmore is also personally guaranteeing this loan, so if those taxes do not pay back the loan in nine years, she is personally responsible to pay the city back.
Aurora Chief Financial Officer Chris Minick said at Tuesday’s meeting that the city has looked at financial statements from both Urban Equity Partners and Gilmore, which have shown that both have the ability to pay back the loans.
Ald. John Laesch, at-large, who has often voted against economic incentives for other developments, said this approach to economic development, where the city loans out money and requires it be paid back, is better than the city giving forgivable loans like it has in the past.
In addition to the two loans, Urban Equity Properties would put in its own $350,000 and Gilmore would put in her own $100,000 into the project, Dibo previously said.
Ald. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, said at Tuesday’s meeting that he was supportive of the project, but that its proposed budget seemed conservative based on his experience as an architect, and that he was worried the developer will come back for more money. Dibo said the developer is responsible for any budget spillover on the project.
The funds for the two loans would come from the city’s Transformation Fund, which was established after the city received $16 million from a redevelopment deal with Cyrus One last year to build a second data center location in the city, according to Minick.
He said at last week’s Committee of the Whole meeting that the city put aside $9 million of that $16 million to create the Transformation Fund for economic development, with the idea that the funds would be loaned out and repaid with interest, creating a self-perpetuating fund.
The restaurant is set to open near the end of this year or in the first quarter of next year, according to past reporting.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
