Finance Committee - 6/20/2018 Page 7
Alderman O’Brien
Right and prior to that were the horses, Mr. Mayor.
Mayor Donchess
That’s what | meant the horse wagons, right. Any questions or discussion?
Alderman O’Brien
Yes | just want to say that | am totally supportive this, particularly old buildings and when it was a fire station |
think you can know what my position being on the fire department, the affinity, you loved them, we lived in
them. They were our second home. To see it repurposed to this | think is good, | think it will draw a lot of
questions that come up from a lot of our constituents on what we were going to do with 14 Court Street. | think
this fits right into something that we can enjoy. How about access off of Main Street? You've got Library Walk
that comes right up there. So it would be just a finger coming up to go into enhancing that particular
neighborhood. To have it as a brewery as an ex-firefighter, retired firefighter, it’s a good thing. It fits within the
parameters. | think esthetically it will be pleasing to people but | do have one question out of this and to the
level of different breweries to which was an education to me, this would be a nanobrewey. Could you just
explain what a nano is for people like me who didn’t understand what a nano was?
Mr. Vayo
Through the Mayor to you it is basically a classification of the quantity of beer that you can brew in a given
year. So their classification with the, | forget what the federal entity is that manages the production of alcohol
products, but basically they are nano brewery plus, which means that they can also serve food. So they will
have a kitchen in the back along with a two barrel brewing system. They anticipate brewing somewhere in the
order of 2,000 gallons of beer a year. So that works out to roughly about 45 kegs. They are very small and
this is strategically a first step for them. If they are successful with their model they will look to ramp up over
time and make further investments.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you Mr. Mayor. | think this is a great idea and as an entrepreneur | love that spirit. | do have a question
about this fit up, so they are going to put $100,000.00 in the fit up. God forbid something happens we lease it
to them and in 5 years we end up back with the building. What is the cost to us to now use that as something
else?
Mr. Vayo
Alderman Kelly | would say that’s a great question and the way | can explain it best is we have a loan fund
that’s specific purpose is to lend to businesses to help them start up or expand and grow, or in some instances
restructure. Typically those loans are somewhere between $180,000.00 somewhere in that range. Itis a
program that the City has run for over 20 years. The program has just under $1 million dollars in capital total
and about 45% to 55% of that money is out lent at this point. So we have a pool of capital which part of my
primary role here in the City is to make sure that money gets lent out. So the Liquid Therapy meets the criteria
for lending and so we are going to let them borrow that money.
What is unique about Liquid Therapy in terms of us lending them capital is that they are not, they don’t meet
the traditional standard of collateral where they would have to have a certain amount of equipment or making a
certain amount of investments in something that could be recouped in order to give the loan. But since we
own the building and since we are only lending to the tenant fit up portion of the building, our collateral sort to
speak in this exchange or this loan is the building itself. So what would happen is if let’s say Liquid Therapy
didn’t make it as a business. We would have a fully fit up building which we could then lease out to another
party. So that’s our backdraft or safety on the funds that are being invested into the building.
