Instead of a six-story retail and apartment complex on the site of a shuttered restaurant, a sports pub will spice up the corner of Sixth Avenue and Alder.
The Overtime Bar and Grill is headed for a spring opening, said Chuck Bayha, who has managed Tacoma’s Paddy Coyne’s Irish Pub and worked in pull-tab consulting.
The theme is a higher-end sports pub, with pull-tabs and a menu of burgers and steaks. He said last week that he plans to remodel the former ABC Chinese restaurant, but some key pieces of the restaurant operation are in good shape, including venting hoods and grease traps.
Meanwhile, the owners and developers of the corner lot have put plans for The Marc on 6th on hold until they can pay for them.
Tacoma’s Affinity Investments announced plans for 1.5 stories of underground parking, 4,500 square feet of retail and five stories of about 60 apartments in June 2010. More than a year later, financing has proved to be the problem.
“With the economy and market and the way the banks are financing, it’s been a struggle,” said Kyle Prosser, a broker with First Western Properties who has been marketing the project since it was announced. “The plan moving forward is to hope conditions improve and the financing aspects becomes a little looser.”
While Affinity works on that, Prosser signed a lease with Bayha for the pub. The lease has some special provisions, Prosser said, to account for the need to move the pub out quickly if financing comes through for the larger project.
The pub is locked in for at least the first 18 months, Prosser said, to allow Bayha to establish his business. After that, “we have the ability to void the lease and write him a check. And he has first right of refusal to come into a new building,” he said.
Staff writer Sue Kidd contributed to this report.
Kathleen Cooper: 253-597-8546
kathleen.cooper@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/business
Twitter: @KCooperTNT
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