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Dinosaur Barbecue may come to region
Friday, November 14, 2008
CAPITAL REGION — A barbecue restaurant chain with a fiercely loyal following in central New York is scouting the Capital Region for a new location. Dinosaur Barbecue founder John Stage is looking to expand the chain for the first time since he opened a restaurant in Harlem four years ago. He said he has been looking at various spaces in the Albany area, where he has family, though he could not specify when a local restaurant might open. “Right now, we’re in negotiations in the Capital Region … but we’re not ready to make an announcement,” Stage said. Among the places Stage is eyeing for a Dinosaur is the former Fresno’s Southwest Restaurant on the Troy waterfront. The Syracuse-based Galco Management Services abruptly closed that Fresno’s last year. The Dinosaur chain has been steadily gaining fame nationwide — particularly from its barbecue cuisine and blues club — since Stage opened his first Dinosaur in Syracuse in 1988. A second Dinosaur opened in Rochester a decade later. Stage acknowledged the state’s poor economic climate poses challenges for the expansion of his chain. But other restaurateurs are not letting the financial crisis spoil their plans. Later this month, the owner of two Hudson Valley steakhouses will open The Standard in the former Bugaboo Creek space at Crossgates Mall in Guilderland. In Schenectady, a local family of local restaurant operators bought the Van Dyck Restaurant and Brewery in an October bankruptcy court auction. Similarly to Dinosaur, the Van Dyck operated under a barbecue and jazz club format, but it is not clear whether the McDonald family will revive the Stockade restaurant in the same fashion. The McDonalds also own Pinhead Susan’s, The Stockade Inn and the Park Inn. “When the time is right and things make sense — that’s my timetable,” Stage said, explaining his rationale for when the Capital Region Dinosaur will open. The New York Times reported last month that Stage in fall of 2009 will relocate his Harlem restaurant because its current location will be demolished as part of a Columbia University expansion project. That Dinosaur will move to a nearby Columbia warehouse, on which he spent about $2 million for renovations. The Times called the Harlem Dinosaur “a pioneer in a once forsaken stretch of the neighborhood, which has since seen the arrival of a number of restaurants and clubs.” Get ALL of our news...Click here to subscribe to our online edition, a complete replica of our print edition.
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July 4, 2009
7:17 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Someone in Schenectady should be looking into drawing this chain to downtown. The dinosaurs in Syracuse and Rochester do a phenomenal business. Get one to Schenectady as fast as you can........and watch downtown grow!
11:41 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
This is an economic savings for me as it would cut down the number of trips to Syracuse to get great bbq food!
9:58 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
In Troy, New York,... the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000 taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant.
Meet George Soros. He owns Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
.But Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has come calling. And it has found just the building it wants.
The building has almost $220,000 in back taxes owed on it.
Now, typically, if you buy a property with any liens against, you pay those.
...Unless you’re Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
In this instance, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has pressured the local industrial development agency into paying the back taxes on the building it wants to buy. That’s $218,000.
Further, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is getting a five-year deferment on the property tax that improvements on its property would have otherwise obligated it to. That five-year lag will continue for 20 years.
Meaning that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que will spend the next two decades paying less than its fair share of property taxes – while the locally owned businesses against which it competes will have to pay their full obligation.
But wait, there’s more.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is also being given exemption from $60,000 in sales tax for materials used to improve its building, and the $53,000 fee for recording its mortgage is being waived.
Let’s do the math on that. Without even considering the five-year property-tax lag, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is being given $330,000 to come to Troy.
To open a restaurant.
Which will employ cooks and waitresses.
And compete against locally owned mom-and-pop restaurants, all of which are required to pay their taxes and which have received not a dime of taxpayer money.
And let’s not forget that the guy who owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has a personal fortune of some $11 billion. This guy is the 29th-richest person in the world.
This is an illustration of just how bad things can get, of how the insanity of “economic development” can waste money and strain credibility.
...Because private enterprise should be private enterprise. If you want to expand your business, you should pay for it. No business should be subsidized, it should be sink or swim – that is the free market, that is capitalism.
And that is what we must defend.
And insanity like this Dinosaur Bar-B-Que deal is what we must reject and defeat.
Source: Bob Lonsberry