Published: May 30, 2009 01:09 am      

CITY OF LOCKPORT: Wine Emporium appears to be a go for this summer

Greater Lockport Development Corp. is taking action to ensure the Wine Emporium opens on Canal Street this summer.

GLDC’s board of directors this week approved spending the money to outfit 79 Canal St. as a satellite winery/marketplace for all locally produced goods. The agency will pay the tab for having the building interior finished, then lease or sell it to the company that pitched the Wine Emporium.

“Finally, we’ll have something on the block, and it’s the right thing,” Mayor Michael Tucker, GLDC president, said Friday.

Beautiful Visions, a separate company by J. Fitzgerald Group partners Jack Martin and Carmel Cerullo-Beiter, pitched the Emporium as a showcase for products created in Niagara County.

The Emporium is to be run by Margo Bittner’s Appleton Creek Winery LLC. Martin said every member of the Niagara Wine Trail has agreed to rent space within for sale of their products; and manager Sara Capen is striking deals with all-Niagara County food, art and craft producers to showcase their products alongside the wines.

Martin will negotiate with GLDC principals next week regarding whether his company will lease or purchase the improved building from GLDC. Outfitting is expected to cost about $80,000; construction could begin in mid-June and the shop opened around July 14, he said. The first floor of the two-story building will be finished first, in order to get the doors opened and the Emporium capitalizing on the canal tourism season.

GLDC has about $250,000 cash on hand to loan to local businesses, so outfitting 79 Canal St. means spending about one-third of it in one shot.

Tucker appealed to the board to step up after the Niagara River Greenway commission earlier this month rejected the city’s request that it back a grant to cover the outfitting costs. Although the commission’s director last week invited the city to make a second application for the money, which would hold down vendors’ rents, the city wouldn’t get an answer until September — and that’s too late, Tucker said.

“I didn’t want to take a chance on having to wait a whole year to get this going. Things can happen,” he said.

Construction will be speedy because GLDC is not legally required to put the work out to bid, according to Attorney John Ottaviano. It’s using money from its revolving loan fund, which is considered private, not public, cash, he said. The agency may use the contractors that Martin already obtained estimates from.

Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.