Day on the JAY may have been pushed inside because of the rain, but the sun came out for the inaugural Rock the Block event later that evening.

Although the event was the Student Involvement Office’s idea, they worked in conjunction with Residential Life, Campus Programming Board and Choosing and Learning Environments with Alcohol Respect (CLEAR).

Residential Life Coordinator (RLC) Jill Auxter said they decided to have the block party in the area on Rowland Ave in front of three Small Living Units (SLUs), because it has been seen as a “hidden treasure.”

“Anyone who grew up on a street that had block parties will know how much fun it is to be outside, play games, and hang out with your neighbors,” Auxter said.

“We wanted to give OWU students an event that brings our students together, not just as neighbors, but as a campus community.”

Levi Harrel, RLC for the SLss, theme houses and Welch Hall, said it was an event to join the city and campus.

“At its core, Rock the Block is a block party that is meant for members of the OWU and Delaware communities to come together and enjoy themselves,” he said.

The event featured food from Dan’s Deli and Kinetic, a food truck co-founded by OWU alum Andrew Tuchow and served free Whit’s custard.

The staff also distributed free t-shirts for the first 100 people. Student DJs the Arjune Brothers and band Wahoo Sam Crawford played music in the gazebo at Bicentennial Park.

“We are having this event for the students, and it adds another fun way to end the semester,” Auxter said.

“Rock the Block is a small-scale outdoor concert and all-campus block party meant for members of the OWU community to celebrate arrival of spring and the end of the academic year,” Harrel added.

Both Auxter and Harrel said the planning of the event has been pretty easy working with the different organizations and Delaware city.

Lacking liquor licenses the root of restaurant closings

Financial troubles and filled liquor license quotas are the root of the problem in the recent closings of several Delaware restaurants.

Matt Mullins, public information officer for the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Division of Liquor Control, said bars or restaurants need D-Class liquor permits if they wish to sell any type of alcohol. A D-Class permit, he said, allows patrons to consume alcohol on a restaurant’s premise, while different types of D-Class permits allow for the sale of different types of alcohol.

For example, a D5 liquor permit “give you all types – beer, wine, liquor, and low-proof spirits,” Mullins said. According to the Ohio Department of Commerce, a D5 permit allows for the sale of “spirituous liquor for on premises consumption only, beer, wine and mixed beverages for on premises or off premises in original sealed containers, until 2:30AM.”

Mullins added that the D5 permit allows for sale of these products Monday through Saturday, while adding a D6 license extends this sale of wine, beer and liquor to Sundays. Several restaurants in Delaware operate under active D5 liquor permits, like Chandra’s Bistro located at 10 N. Sandusky St. and El Vaquero located at 259 S. Sandusky St.

The first step the Division of Liquor Control takes to decide if they can approve an application for a liquor permit is to run criminal background and financial verification checks on the applicants, Mullins said.

“We also have to check if any public institutions are within 500 feet of the new applicant’s location for the license,” he said. “Public institutions like churches and schools can reject the application for a liquor permit and can request a hearing.”

Another step in a restaurant obtaining a liquor permit is looking at how many permits are available at a given moment based on the city’s liquor permit quota. This quota, Mullins said, provides for a certain amount of liquor permits in the city based on the city’s population.

“Ohio Revised code provides for one D-Class permit for every 2,000 people in the population of the city,” he said.

According to census data, the most recently estimated population for the City of Delaware was roughly 36,000 people in 2012. Using Mullins’ explanation, this leaves the City of Delaware with about 18 D-Class liquor permits available to be filled.

If a restaurant seeks a certain type of permit and the quota is filled, Mullins said restaurant owners can apply for transfer of ownership of a permit. This would involve a business becoming the owner of a permit previously owned by a business that no longer needed it.

The Face of the Problem

If residents of Delaware have dined in the city at any time in the past five years, they might recognize the name Nova Restaurant. Nova Restaurant, closed its doors at 5 N. Sandusky St. in 2012 after its owner filed for bankruptcy and was later indicted with fraud.

The liquor permit associated with Nova Restaurant, a D5 class permit, was cancelled before its closing on June 29, 2011 because of what Mullins described as a tax problem.

“In 2009, the Ohio Department of Taxation sent us a tax non-renewal order for the business,” he said. “There’s a statue in Ohio Revised Code that prevents us from renewing licenses if there’s a delinquent tax issue.”

On Jan. 29, 2010, Nova Restaurant’s owners sent an appeal to the Ohio Liquor Control Commission regarding the notice and a stay issue was ordered from this date until April 23, 2010, Mullins said, meaning liquor was sold between Jan. 29 and April 23 of 2010.

“The Franklin County Court of Common Pleas affirmed the commission’s decision and our own decision on June 29, 2011,” he said.

Following Nova’s closing, another restaurant, Generations, tried its hand at business in the same location. On Aug. 20, 2012, the owners of Generations applied for D1, D2 and D3 liquor permits, which would provide for the sale of a combination of beer, wine, spirituous liquor and mixed drinks, and the restaurant was granted a D2 and D3 permit.

“For the D1 permit, there was no opening under the quota,” Mullins said.

To bypass this issue, Generations applied for a D1 permit through the “trex” process, a transfer of permit ownership that is exempt from the city’s quota numbers.

“The City of Delaware designated it as an economic development project and they had a D1, D2, and D3 permit at one time,” Mullins said.

Generations ended up closing due to what Sean K. Hughes, business concierge and economic development director for the City of Delaware, called a “marketing issue.”

After Generations also closed, Son of Thurman took its place, officially opening on Feb. 13, 2014. All of the liquor permits possessed by Generations were transferred to DeVol Holdings LLC, under the DBA Son of Thurman.

Hughes said he thinks Son of Thurman will have more success than its predecessors in the same location.

“Son of Thurman ownership has tremendous restaurant experience and has a brand name,” he said. “They are already so successful that they are driving customers into surrounding restaurants who do not want to wait or who are making a return visit to Delaware.”

Hughes said the owner of Son of Thurman, Chris DeVol, has “tremendous experience” in low cost marketing and will use his abilities to properly market Son of Thurman in conjunction with its parent restaurant, Thurman Café.

This is key, Hughes said, because usually in Delaware, “restaurants close because business is bad or because of poor marketing.”

Hughes said other problems, like poor customer service, can impact the success of local businesses.

“Often times bad service can impact a restaurant faster than food quality issues,” he said. “If a restaurant gets a reputation for bad service, customers can be very unforgiving. A typical customer won’t give a restaurant a second chance if they have experienced bad service.”

Even Closer to Home

Independently-owned Fiesta Mexico closed amidst financial issues including problems with paying taxes.

Fiesta Mexico’s liquor permit, a D3 allowing for the sale and consumption of spirituous liquor, was cancelled on April 18 of this year because the restaurant did not renew its application since it had gone out of business in late 2013.

Ana Angeles, a former Fiesta Mexico employee, said she thinks part of the reason the restaurant went out of business was because of the limitations of its D3 liquor permit. Angeles said when Fiesta Mexico first opened and applied for liquor permits necessary for the sale of beer and wine, D1 and D2 class permits, were unavailable because the quotas for them in the City of Delaware were filled.

“We used to have a liquor license, that means like hard liquor – no wine, no beer,” she said. “And that was one of the problems. Some students like to drink beer, or some people like to go and enjoy their food with just one beer, not like something really strong like liquor. But there aren’t enough licenses for every place.”

Angeles said Fiesta Mexico originally intended to sell beer and wine, but a liquor-only permit was the only option available due to the full quota.

“The permit said that two other places were on the list to wait, so it depends on who made their application first,” she said.

Hughes said the closing of Fiesta Mexico was a “surprise” to the City of Delaware.

“Fiesta Mexico was a surprise to us as they did not indicate there was a problem, so we were not able to help,” he said.

Hughes also noted that the large space at 13 W. Williams St. could be hard for restaurateurs to manage successfully.

“This is an incredibly large restaurant space and probably more than an upstart restaurant can handle unless they have years and years of restaurant experience,” he said. “We are working to recruit experienced restaurateurs and existing successful restaurants into this space.”

Sean Hughes said many restaurants are looking at the city’s empty storefronts like Brooklyn Heights’ old space and a 38 E. Winter St. open location, next to the Strand Theatre.

In regards to Fiesta Mexico’s old location, Hughes said a Mexican café is opening by an experienced restaurant owner. The windows of the restaurant currently indicate that this will be called William Street Café.

As part of phase one of the Student Housing Master Plan, Small Living Units on Rowland Avenue and Oak Hill Avenue will be replaced with apartment buildings and “connection communities.”

Collaborative Architects Sandy Carr and Mike Dinardo, who designed the buildings, said they will be more energy efficient and have a “residential feel.”

Craig Ullom, vice president for Student Affairs, said the process started in 2007 with the Residential Facilities Committee that worked with the Architects to develop the plan.

 “Since then we have been involved in a continual process of planning and refinement in tandem with the completion of over $20 million in improvements to student housing since 2009,” He said.

 Ullom said Mackey Mitchell, an architect firm that specializes in student housing, assessed the condition of the residential buildings last year with Lincoln Construction Company and Buildings and Grounds.

Director of Residential Life Wendy Piper said the infrastructure of the SLUs needs to be addressed in order to be a long-term investment for the university.

“A focused improvement was not enough,” Piper said. “There needed to be replacement as opposed to repair.

“As for the location for new construction, we are considering Rowland Avenue for apartment development and Oak Hill Avenue for a SLU neighborhood concept.”

Piper said not all of the details are set in stone, but the soonest construction could begin is in summer 2015, with the new residences opening in fall 2016. New construction would take 9 to 12 months.

“We will continue the discussion with our Board of Trustees at the meeting next month, and the Board has indicated that they are eager to move ahead,” she said.

Piper also said where the SLU residents will relocate during construction is still being discussed.

“Some facilities could feasibly be done over the summer without disruption of student housing during an academic year, but some others would need to be offline for an academic year,” she said.

SLU – Shared Living Unit

The architects said there are two potential design plans for Rowland Avenue, where the House of Thought (HoT), Women’s House and Modern Foreign Language House are located. Instead of SLUs, the plan is to construct apartments in the areas. There are two different design plans for the apartments, one with 96 beds in four “six-flats” and the other with 120 beds in 10 brownstone buildings.

“We want it to have a residential, urban feel,” architect Carr said.

The six-flats will have three floors and with 24 to 30 units in each flat with four beds per unit. All of the rooms will be singles, and each flat will have a full kitchen, common areas, dining, living and study rooms, and laundry room. There will be one bathroom per four students, a porch and exterior staircases to the upper floor. No elevator was shown on the plan.

The brownstones would have the same features but would have all single rooms and an elevator.

The second part of the plan is for construction on Oak Hill Avenue where the House of Black Culture, Interfaith House and Tree House are located. This area is intended for “connection communities” and would be the SLUs’ new location.

Each connection community would house two SLUs, separated and joined by a wall. Each half of the building would be identical and feature double and single rooms with two floors, a kitchen, common areas, living, dining, study and laundry rooms and a porch.

Senior Alex D’Amore-Braver, HoT’s moderator, said he is concerned that the grouping of different SLUs into the same building will have a negative effect on the members.

“Sharing a building with another SLU would be detrimental to our unique ideas and mission, along with that other SLUs’, because neither side would have the separate physical space to associate with their ideas,” D’Amore-Braver said.

Sophomore Emma Buening, HoT member, said being coupled with another SLU will be difficult, because different SLUs have people with different ideas.

“Those perspectives should both be respected, but I can easily see tension rising between the houses because of the closeness,” Buening said. “The only way to mitigate that would be to assimilate, and that takes away from our individuality.”

Senior Erin Gregory said she has never lived in a SLU, but she understands the purpose of the architect’s design plan to group the SLUs together.

“These architects are tasked with making this project as cost-effective as possible while providing SLU’s with the space necessary to maintain their individual identities,” Gregory said. “Although sharing a wall is not desirable, it is the most cost-effective solution.”

Fresh Face for Freshman Dorms

The architects also plan to build four-person suites in a building that would connect Thomson and Bashford Halls. This building, called the “Future Gateway” would have a tunnel going through it to make passage to the fraternities still possible.

The building, like Thomson and Bashford, would be reserved for first-year students, but would not have community bathrooms.

Buening said this could cause the freshmen housed there to be isolated from the rest of OWU.

“Making it so that they don’t have to leave their dorm is not going to help the freshmen branch out to any part of the community other than the section they already exist within,” Buening said.

D’Amore-Braver said he likes the open space between the two freshman dorms where the new building will go.

“I feel that the current green space/paved path between Bashford and Thomson serves as a perfect gateway to fraternity hill, D’Amore-Braver said. “But I also understand that there is little room for the expansion of OWU’s residential options without purchasing new land, and the tunnel idea would allow building expansion while maintaining the ability to pass to fraternity hill.”

The Cost of Renovations 

According to Dan Hitchell, vice president of finance and administration, the estimated cost of phase one of the renovations is $35 million.

The cost is part of the Student Housing Master Plan’s total projected cost of  $80 million.

Hitchell said there is a number of different ways to finance the renovations.

He said the university could borrow the money from a bank through a private loan or issue bonds to pay for the renovations. The money will be borrowed in phases.

Ullom said the Board of Trustees asked administrators to include a policy that would make maintenance of the buildings part of the funding. 

“The Board doesn’t want us to spend all this money and then not continue the upkeep,” he said.

The OWU of tomorrow

Highlights from the Student Housing Master Plan