Digging deeper

My crack team of architects and engineers have submitted plans to Tempe (almost a month late) and even more impressively delivered a set to me! For a while now we have had a permit for demolition but soon we can actually start building. But only after demolishing more than we expected however. Last week we had a visit from City of Tempe water department. Everyone I've met at the city so far has been extremely courteous and has gone out of their way to be helpful…. until the visit by the water department. Bottom line, without the gory details, is that we have to dig up about 25% of our kitchen floor to re route drain lines that are buried up to five feet deep. We have a giant jacuzzi-sized grease trap buried behind the building and certain pipes need to be routed to it to collect excess grease so it doesn't end up in the city sewer system. Unfortunately for us the code has changed as to which drains need to go there. Some of the work is reasonable and logical, but when it was pointed out to me that I have to spend thousands of dollars to plow up a perfectly tiled kitchen floor to install drains to collect the greasy residue from an ice machine and a lettuce washing sink, well its mindless bureaucracy at its worst.

That set me up for an unexpected inspection visit from the Tempe fire department. My jaw tightened when I drove up and saw the truck in the parking lot, but his demeanor was the polar opposite and he was nothing but helpful and constructive in helping me understand exactly what needed to be done. A smile and a handshake later I felt good about Tempe again. Now that I have plans I am scrambling to line up subs for concrete, wrought iron, a good technical guy to help with the electronics of the building (surveillance, phone, pos and sound systems) an upholsterer, and a welder (for stainless work) If anyone knows someone who fits the bill have them email me at AZjobpost@aol.com.

From the ground up

Let me tell you about the beautiful wood floors in our dining rooms. Well, actually they used to be beautiful many years ago. They are the genuine thing; thick natural strips of oak laid plank by plank, sanded smooth and finished in place. Its almost impossible to find a floor like this anymore outside of a private home so we were shocked when we peeled up the carpets and discovered them. Now to refinish them. I've complained about money before so it won't surprise you to know we had no money in the budget to bring in a professional to restore them. It takes peeling off the carpet, scraping off layers of glue, endless hours of sanding through the old varnish and stain, and finally restaining and varnishing. JVG convinced me that he and our crew could do the work ourselves. Looking back I realize it was the tightness of our budget talking to me and not his prowess as a finish craftsman. JVG has an unbelievable range of skills but fine finish work is not one of them. (He also has almost zero technical savvy so I can feel free trash talking him here where he will never know it) Anyway, after a week of dousing the floor with random solvents, scraping and mostly gouging the wood I put a halt to the action and placed an emergency ad on Craig's list and begin weeding my way through the 20 or so craftsmen who applied for the job within 24 hours of placing the ad. We settled on Earl from Winslow. More about the unusual nature of Earl in later posts, but after all was said and done he did an amazing job at an amazing price. He is finished with 75% of the floors in only a week and is coming back this weekend to finish the job (fingers firmly crossed) Pictures don't do it justice but the floors are gorgeous, maybe too gorgeous for humble old RigaTony's - but we'll let you be the judge.

A rewarding Thanksgiving diversion

Just a quick post to acknowledge my crew for their excellent work in helping to provide a Thanksgiving feast to needy Chandler residents at the Chandler Boys and Girls Club. Iguana Mack's and RigaTony's has been providing food for this event for 12 years and this year was special because it represented the christening of their new facility. We had a huge turn out - over 700 people were fed who otherwise would not have the benefit of a holiday dinner.

A moment of calm

Today feels like the eye of the hurricane. Weirdly I have no appointments today but every upcoming day for the next week will be building to chaos. Monday alone I have 4 meetings, one with my technical guy to review the wiring plan for the restaurant. We need to wire for surveillance cameras, sound equipment, telephone locations and point of sale locations. Then a meeting with our retail group to launch our new retail campaign which I will explain later, another plan review meeting with architect, designer and contractors, and then a tour of the brand new Boys and Girls Club facility where we will be feeding close to 1000 needy people a Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday next week. So today is left to planning and making preparations at home here for the 60 -70 friends and family that will be joining Chrissy and me for thanksgiving, which is by the way our anniversary (any creative suggestions for that shopping duty are welcome!).

Through all of it I have to push my architect to get his work done and get these construction plans into the city. We can't start construction until the city approves our plans and its getting very tight. Our lease ends in Chandler on March 30th of 2010, so we must be open before then. According to my plan there should be only be three days in March when Baked RigaTony is not available. Its up to my architect to make sure that doesn't turn into a month or more. (Are you reading this Todd?!!!!)

I have been emailed a question through this post as to when we are opening in Tempe and my best guess is March 17th. The new location is something I neglected to document here as well. It is at 1850 E Warner Road on the NE corner of McClintock and Warner Road. It used to be a 3 Margaritas Restaurant.

We can't do any construction yet but here's some destruction of a fine looking fireplace that was in the entry of the restaurant.

I have discovered that I am not a natural blogger. I was never one for journals or photo albums either so it shouldn't have been a surprise. Nevertheless I am going to regroup as we enter the complex construction phase and post at least several times a week to document the evolution of this project.

Here's a brief recap of what we've been working on in the last few weeks.

We've completed our exterior elevation plan and submitted drawings to Tempe for approval. They initial reaction seemed positive, but we'll see when we get comments back hopefully in a few days. Our landlord had to sign off on the plan as well, and they were very enthusiastic. I'll post the actual exterior elevations as soon as we get approval.At the same time we've completed our construction plans and are fine tuning everything before turning them into the city as well. We're behind about two weeks on this and I have to admit that I'm nervous about being behind on something that we had so much time to do. The construction plans include a complete revamp of our heating and ac system, a total redo on the kitchen, all new surfaces in the dining rooms and bar, and of course the construction of a new building facade and a patio.I've continued to purchase equipment for the kitchen and bar and recently scored on an awesome 30 gallon steam jacketed tilting kettle which to our chef is like moving up from a bicycle to a Masseratti. We have also been interviewing trades to select who we want when we start building. Sign painters, concrete, paint, electrical contractors etc....Another interesting development is the addition of a Doctor to our staff. More about that later.

In the mean time here are a couple of pictures. One is of JVG and Greg gingerly moving the old Mesa RigaTony's neon sign from where its been stored in my backyard to the repair shop. (note: I've never used "JVG" and "gingerly" in the same sentence before). The next is a shot of what happened moments later. No just kidding, but its a funny sequence. The truck turned over in front of the restaurant the other day when we were doing demo inside. No one was hurt.

We're having a Vine Time

The clock is ticking and we're mostly going back and forth from our architect to our designer through interminable design meetings. The project isn't that complicated its just that; 1.) We want to create an incredible impression 2.) We are adding several new elements to the concept, and 3.) As is true with almost everyone today - we have a very tight budget. But finally yesterday we made our final decisions on what the outside of the building and patio will look like, and are very close on an exciting floor plan that does everything we want it to do. Now its up to the architect to turn them into plans that the city can review. I'll post elevations in the next couple of weeks after we turn them into the city. In the meantime one of our objects is to introduce lots of vegetation to the patio we're going to build and an "Italian Patio" translates to lots of vines. It may look a little underwhelming but above is a picture of the start of our "vine farm" that Chrissy started in our backyard. We will probably double or triple the size in the coming weeks so we can get a head start on getting some mature plants in place by our opening in the spring. I've also been skulking about on craigslist looking for restaurant equipment deals. Here is an antique service desk - perhaps from a hotel that I found and that we will be using in our take-out area, and also pictured below is a retro looking refrigerated deli case that we will be using in our retail section. I found them both in Casa Grande of all places and they're now safe and sound at the new restaurant. Yesterday I went to central phoenix to buy a used back bar refrigerator and negotiated on some new but liquidated bar stools. I have a list of about 30 items that I have budgeted to buy and my object is to find them for less than the budget calls for, because its inevitable that we'll have some big budget surprises down the road. So far so good though. We are planning to replace the entire 20 year old HVAC system with a brand new system of three state-of-the-art humongous AC units, and we just got what i think will be the winning bid yesterday. I was going to tell you how much it is for but we haven't awarded it yet. Weirdly, however, the bid matches our budget almost to the dollar. Hmmmm .... makes me think that I better keep a closer eye on who I let see that budget.

Finally a deadline

I'm back from my second vacation and probably the last break I'll have for quite a while. Its been a hectic week getting back into the groove mending the minor catastrophes with the two restaurants that have happened over the last two weeks. In addition we have a new menu rolling out at Iguana Mack's next week that I've been working with my graphic artist and Chef Jason on, I had an always stressful meeting at the Chandler Planning and Zoning department to get approval for our liquor license extension, we've solicited several air conditioning companies for bids for the new RigaTony's and negotiated the final details on the architects contract for work on RigaTony's. Part of that contract calls for us to submit our ideas for the exterior design by Mid September - just two weeks away. To that end we met again with Kim & Howard - just like past meetings but new there's the pressure of a deadline and the commitment to one single design.

We met for a couple of hours comparing ideas and reviewing tons of photos that Chrissy has been collecting like mad. I think we ended up with a great exterior design and now Kim will go to work doing some photo-shop magic to crank out some renderings so we can get an idea how the final facade will work. Just for fun I submitted a hand drawn rendering of my own today. Don't' panic - its nothing close to what we'll end up with...