On a different note, another Ithaca Times article is about a new restaurant/lounge to replace Delilah's downtown. From the Ithaca Times:
New venue to open at former Delilah’s location on Cayuga Street
Posted: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 12:00 am
By Dialynn Dwyer
reporter@ithacatimes.com
n December 29, 2011, Delilah's on Cayuga which had been open under the name since 2010, closed. Scott and Terrie Miller who bought the building in 2009 will retain ownership of the building, but Justin McGuire and Matt Riis took possession of the space on Jan. 1.
"We looked at a handful of places in downtown," said Riis. "We both have a mutual appreciation for the arts and entertainment, and we saw that it was lacking in the immediate downtown vicinity. We began to put together a business plan in December of last year."
The new venue is to be called ‘Lot 10 Kitchen and Lounge,' simply using the lot number of where the property lies.
"The idea there was really to keep something basic and to reinvent it so it has no associations or connotations of anything that's come before it," Riis explained.
There will be a completely new menu for the venue, a new style in dining, and new service model for the space. But most pointedly different will be the change in management of the upstairs venue.
"Our goal is really to keep the upstairs as a destination for drinking and entertainment and nightlife available for regular hours, six days a week from 5-1," said Riis.
Riis, formally the marketing and events director at the Downtown Ithaca Alliance, and McGuire, the former owner of Bella Pizza in Center Ithaca, have been talking about working together on a new business for about a year and a half/two years.
While the whole space will receive that Riis described as a "major facelift," the main dining area will continue to remain on the first floor with the lounge upstairs.
"Our main goal in the upstairs will be to make it a more viable venue," said Riis, "We plan to add a performance area - a dedicated stage. We also look to enhance lighting as well as improved PA system. We spoke with Dan Smalls. We have talked to him extensively about the venue and the issues of the venue and how he would like to see the space run and what we would like to see happen upstairs. So we plan a series of dance hall shows up there, as well as continuing the weekly events that are being programmed there. The Djug Django will stay around. We've also spoken with the Science Cabaret that do a monthly cabaret there- we're going to continue with that. But basically we're going to try to have entertainment multiple nights a week upstairs in a dedicated performance area."
Riis will be taking his marketing and events background cultivated in the past six years and making use of the many contacts he has made throughout town as he handles the local booking. Besides Smalls, the new owners of Lot 10 have also reached out Bob Phroehl of Buffalo Street Books about the possibility of hosting some of the co-op's programming.
While the new owners hope to engage the student population in the nightlife aspect of the new business, there is also a hope to have an eclectic customer base drawn to the different events they hope to hold that range from music, DJ's and dance parties to local theatre and more artistic literary events.
"Our aim is really to have a place that the community as a whole can find a niche and can find a night, or a few nights out of the week where they feel comfortable," said Riis.
The largest challenge the partners faced, according to Riis, was putting together the financing for the project with the city. The process came together in the end of December 2011, after beginning in March of the previous year. Riis said working with the city through the process was a positive process for the partners.
"It was a very beneficial process in that they helped us extensively, not only with actually obtaining the funding necessarily," he explained," but also in working with us and fine tuning our business plan and looking at our financial projections and making sure they're in line with what's currently taking place on the street. So they were a very big help in assisting us."
The business will open in two phases, with the hopeful opening date for the lounge falling sometime in February and the restaurant opening sometime in March or April.
"As far as challenges moving forward it will be mainly about giving the place a new facelift and letting the public know that there are new owners with new ideas and that its going to have a fresh positive spin and it's going to be nothing like what has taken place," said Riis, "Not only in the last two years, but ever since it opened in 2003 as the Lost Dog, our goals will be to remake the entire space and have it be something completely new and different."
Here's the link:
http://www.ithaca.com/news/ithaca/ar...9bb2963f4.html
