The Spartan Ale House is opening in Aurora, Illinois' west side as part of a revenue-sharing initiative that splits the cost of infrastructure improvements and shares tax revenue between the city and the restaurant's owners.
The new neighborhood pub and eatery will be in the Old Colonial Pharmacy building on Prairie Street, near Prisco's Fine Foods.
"As part of the University Neighbors plan that we just concluded recently, one of the highlights was to look at the redevelopment of the Prairie Street corridor," Aurora Chief Development Officer Bill Wiet said. "This is a result of that process."
JTE Family Properties, an family-owned venture that also owns O'Malley's Pub and Grill on Aurora's East Side, owns the Spartan Ale House.
JTE's Michael Poulakidas said the new restaurant location requires some improvements before it officially opens, including work on Prairie Street and Hartford Avenue.
The total cost of the upgrades required to make both the building and surrounding streets ready for a restaurant are more than $578,000 , which would have made startup for the project cost prohibitive.
As part of the revenue-sharing initiative, the city will split the cost the public street improvements. JTE will pay for upgrades to Prairie Street and the city will pay for the improvements to Hartford Avenue.
Also, the city will provide up to $110,000 in incentive finances to the owners by sharing the revenue generated by sales tax on food and drinks sold at the restaurant for its first 10 years. In the first year, the new restaurant will receive 90 percent of those revenues back. That percentage will decline by 10 percentage points each year until the city receives 100 percent of the sales tax revenue in 10 years.
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