The recent revision to Belmont’s noise ordinance may have lowered the legal decibel level (to 55, that is), but things in the neighborhood are still heating up. Bel Rio, the food and music venue credited with kicking off the noise debate, could get a new tenant.
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Cassis is just one of the options for budding restaurant owners. But get your offer in quick: Co-owner Tim Burgess says there are currently three interested parties. |
The building’s owner, Jeff Easter, says that C&O owner Dave Simpson, a onetime Bel Rio partner, and Gareth Weldon, who remains a partner of Bel Rio LLC, paid the August rent for the site that was abruptly shuttered last month when Bel Rio owner Jim Baldi disappeared, trailing lawsuits and legal charges behind him. Both Simpson and Weldon are signers of the lease. Now, in Baldi’s (unexplained) absence, they’re searching for subletters.
While calls to Simpson were not returned, Easter says six parties have expressed interest in the space so far. “Mostly on the restaurant side of things,” he says, noting that keeping the space as a restaurant is reasonable, given the current set-up.
Of those six, the leading contender wants to turn the venue into a family-friendly pizza place. “If it’s going to be a restaurant,” Easter says, “that’s what I’d want it to be,” adding that it would be good for the neighborhood. About the most noise you can expect from a pizza joint is the satisfied “mmms” to be heard when people smack their lips around a fresh slice. That, and maybe a few tunes coming out of the radio in the kitchen. And, at any rate, Easter figures a pizza place would wrap up business by 11pm. That ought to make the neighbors smile.
Over at the Downtown spot once occupied by Cassis, which closed its doors in April, site co-owner Tim Burgess says he and business partner Vincent Derquennes currently have three parties interested in opening a restaurant in that Water Street location. The duo—who also own and operate Bizou and Bang!—had set a deadline of August 1 before they would turn the venue into an event space themselves. But, they relaxed that deadine because, says Burgess, “with three parties interested, I wanted to give them every opportunity.”
Brew news
Cheers to this, readers: The Brew Ridge Trail, the award-winning collection of breweries in Nelson and Albemarle counties, is adding one more to the roster. Wild Wolf Brewing Company, from the mother-son team of Mary and Danny Wolf, will open a Nellysford home-brew shop next month. The company’s own pub space won’t be ready for another two years, but the shop will offer beer and winemaking supplies, brewing demos and classes at its temporary spot at 2773A Rockfish Valley Hwy.