General Contractors

It turns out that we may not need an architect because we will not be doing any structural design changes, besides breaking down a few walls. Instead, to estimate the renovation costs, what we need is to have some general contractors take a look at the place. We still have not submitted a lease proposal yet, because we need to get the renovation cost estimates first.

Yesterday, we had Bill and Ted from BnK Construction took a look at the place. We decided to go with our original plan of having an open kitchen for the wok area so that customers can see the cooks working the wok. To make that part viewable, the constructors would break down part of a wall and place a large glass in its place.

Our next step is to provide the general contractors with a list of kitchen equipment that we need and its layout. For each equipment listed, we have to include their BTU’s (thermal unit), their dimensions, and whether they need any water hooked up to it. In our business plan that we submitted to the banker we already have the equipment list, but didn’t note their requirements. The general contractors provided us with the measurements of the kitchen area so that we can plan the equipment layout.

In other developments, we have made Wayne Pruner, our business advisor from SCORE who also happens to be a licensed realtor, be our representative for the lease transaction. With his commercial lease and restaurant experience, he would be great help in assisting us with the lease negotiations.

Second Visit

We visited the O'Cielo! place again, this time bringing our architect, Joseph Van Lom. He's quite experienced and knowledgeable when it comes to restaurant renovation; he owns an architecture firm that have designed over 450 restaurants. Joseph pointed out plenty of things about the place that we missed earlier, and we feel we certainly learned a lot today.

This coming Tuesday, we are scheduled to visit the place yet again. Next time, our architect will bring along a kitchen consultant to examine the kitchen's hood and vent system, electrical wiring, natural gas lines, and make suggestions on kitchen equipment and its layout.

Since the previous tenant of the property ran an Italian deli, besides the walk-in fridge and dishwasher, the only other kitchen equipment that they had was a pizza oven and large mixer that they used to mix the pizza dough. We won't need the pizza oven nor the mixer. Instead, we'll have to purchase a wok range, gas range, soup range, fryer, and other equipment. We'll also need a much larger hood vent.

Missing Pictures

Our apologies to our blog visitors for the missing pictures. We are currently having intensive workout on the site that is storing our pictures. Once this process is completed, we hope to cook out better pictures. :OD

Charming Place

We toured a property today that, although not perfect, is the best we've seen so far. The area has good car and foot traffic, plenty of paid and street parking, and is close to offices. It's also next to the city library, where there's lots of people going in and out all day. This is in the outer edge from Portland's central business district.

Here's a picture of the building. The 1st floor is retail space that has the property that we looked at. All the floors above are offices.




Here's the building from another angle. The two windows belong to the property.




This is a closeup. The property used to be an Italian Deli called "O'Cielo!", so it already has a kitchen, hood vacuum unit, and some other restaurant-related amenities.




This is part of the dining area. There are two floors, with the 2nd floor overlooking the bottom.




These two photos are from the 2nd floor looking down. That's the realtor standing down there.





The previous owner had unique lights hanging from the ceiling.




There's plenty of room upstairs too and more seating space behind those curtains. I think that would be perfect for private parties. Up those steps in that room is a door that leads to the restaurant's office.




Outside, I like the surrounding area. The streetcar runs right along the street in front of the restaurant.




Below are photos of buildings in the surrounding area.