Despite owing more than $33,000, Tap Room Hospitality will remain the operator of the clubhouse at the Buffalo Grove Golf Club.
The Village Board has renewed its contract with the vendor that operates the restaurant, despite that company owing more than $30,000 in payments. Understanding that replacing Tap Room Hospitality, LLC with another food-service group would make it even harder to get the missing funds back, the trustees approved a one-year lease extension, with a schedule built in for how the company will pay its overdue bills.
One more missed payment, the contract reads, and Tap Room will be out.
“They’re very positive,” said Geoff Tollefson, the PGA-certified professional at Buffalo Grove Golf Club and the Arboretum Club. “They have a plan in place to do that. They want to be here into the future.”
Buffalo Grove owns the land, building and most of the equipment that comprises the Village Grill & Tavern, 48 Raupp Boulevard, and leases its operation to Tap Room. Village records show that the company owes $33,760.80 — all from 2014, in the form of rent and utilities that Village Hall paid but never received compensation from Tap Room for. Records show that the company has paid all of its 2015 expenses, and village manager Dane Bragg told the trustees during their Dec. 7 meeting that Tap Room even paid about $20,000 worth of fall and early winter obligations in advance.
“How did the village allow the restaurant to get into such debt in the first place?” Village President Beverly Sussman asked during that Dec. 7 meeting.
Tap Room’s managing partners , Jim Leo and Brett Gaylord, have not returned calls or emails seeking comment. After the Dec. 21 meeting, though, Tollefson noted that Tap Room has been running the Village Grill since 2004, and that this is their first problem.
“Historically, they’ve been very good,” Tollefson said. “A lot of it depends, to be honest, on the fluctuation of golf. This year was a pretty good year.”
But Tap Room’s past and new leases have reflected the up-and-down nature of a business that hinges on weather. Tollefson and the trustees spoke on Dec. 7 about Tap Room’s monthly lease payments, which fluctuate with the coming and going of golf season — the company makes more in the summer, so it pays more in the summer.
“We share that risk with them,” board member Jeff Berman said of the flexible schedule.
Tap Room’s new lease spells out its repentance plan: The company will make six installments of $5,626.80, once a month from March through August. Failure to hit any of those marks — or fall behind on its regular bills — will terminate the contract, Tollefson said. And, he added, all of Tap Room’s property inside the Village Grill building will become the village’s property, to utilize or sell as it pleases.
“They seem pretty dedicated to making the payments,” Tollefson said of Gaylord and Leo.
“You never want to have people falling into debt, that’s no way to operate,” Sussman said Dec. 22.
And she hoped that Buffalo Grove’s other vendors, lessees and government partners would not bank on receiving such grace periods as part of their 2016 financial strategies.
“It was really unusual,” Sussman said. “We tried to go over backward to help those two pay back what was owed, and still operate.
“But we can’t have this become a regular thing,” she added.
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