New restaurants, Aldi store on the way amid downtown Bartlett improvements
With a boost from local tax incentives and business assistance grants, Bartlett is in the midst of a restaurant and grocery store renaissance this summer.
Following the long anticipated opening of More Brewing Company downtown, the village is awaiting upgrades to a popular breakfast and lunch restaurant, the replacement of a former eatery and barbershop space with a high-end Italian-style restaurant, and the second location of a Venezuelan restaurant operating in Hanover Park.
Furthermore, a 19,432-square-foot Aldi - to be Bartlett's second nonspecialized grocery store - is under construction at the Streets of Bartlett shopping center downtown for a late 2023 or early 2024 opening.
Savoury Restaurant and Pancake Cafe, The Boss's Signature, and Issa's Venezuelan Restaurant each have received committee recommendations for village board approval of Bartlett Economic Development Assistance grants.
Savoury Restaurant has operated at 782 W. Bartlett Road for 16 years, and now is making $97,387 in improvements, including the addition of 20 indoor and 20 outdoor seats to reduce wait times.
"It's arguably one of the most popular breakfast restaurants in the area," Bartlett Economic Development Coordinator Tony Fradin said.
Its improvement costs include $59,787 that are grant eligible, for which a 50% award of $29,893 is recommended.
Gino Metallo has purchased the north end of Main Street Plaza at 326 S. Main St. to turn the Still Bar & Grill and barbershop there into the more modern and attractive The Boss's Signature restaurant.
In his grant application, Metallo wrote: "For decades, this center is part of what I have nicknamed 'the dead zone' of Bartlett's downtown. The tired, uninviting look of the center is in desperate need of an overhaul. My goal is to change the personification of the strip center from unappealing to destination."
Building improvements alone are estimated at $276,000, while parking improvements that are not grant-eligible push the total cost to more than $300,000. A village grant of $50,000 - 20% of the build-out costs - has been recommended, but the work already is on track for a September completion.
Also expected to be done next month is the improvement of the vacant space at 207 S. Main St. for the second location of Issa's Venezuelan restaurant.
The site has been the village's only vacant restaurant space during the past two years and is at least twice the size of Issa's original location in Hanover Park, Fradin said.
The owners have documented $50,227 worth of improvements to the space, for which a 34% grant of $17,000 has been recommended.
The grant program invests Bartlett's portion of video gambling taxes in businesses that generate sales tax.
Grants are available for up to 50% of the cost of an eligible project, with a cap of $50,000.
With More Brewing Company having opened earlier this summer on the former site of Lucky Jack's at the corner of Railroad and Oak avenues, village officials are enacting the 50% state sales tax sharing agreement negotiated in 2018.
The agreement will pay annually the business half of the sales tax collected up to a limit of $100,000 or 10 years, whichever happens first. More Brewing bought the vacated site from the village for $101,000.
The forthcoming Aldi also benefits from an incentive agreement that included a $250,000 infrastructure grant, a waiver of about $30,000 in the usual village fees, and a 50% rebate of the sales tax collected by the village until $220,000 has been paid out.