MORGAN HILL
– A second set of plans to turn the old police station building
into a brew pub was submitted to the city last week.
MORGAN HILL – A second set of plans to turn the old police station building into a brew pub was submitted to the city last week.
Geno and Cindy Acevedo, owners of the local El Toro Brewing Co., have looked for years for a downtown location for an El Toro Brew Pub and Restaurant. Other sites, they said, have proved either too small, too poorly located or too expensive to upgrade.
The police department building at the “gateway” site of Monterey Road and Main Avenue, they said, is just about perfect.
The couple’s 43-page business plan that includes everything from area demographics to marketing strategy and menus, will go up against another brew pub idea, submitted earlier by Page Holdings, LLC. Headed by Rick Page, that consortium includes Bob Stoddard of Sunnyvale’s Stoddard Brewing Co., Craig Kennedy and Ron Erskine of Gilroy’s Coast Range Brewing Co. and Mike Miller, who is in commercial real estate. Architect Charles Weston drew the plans for the Page renovation and Larry Kent is on board to handle the actual remodel.
All live in Morgan Hill except Stoddard, a former Morgan Hill resident who Page said would run the restaurant.
Brews at a potential Morgan Hill Brewing Company (the Page group) would be made off site.
The third group previously interested in the building, led by Lou Pappas of the Bold Knight restaurant, decided against submitting plans, according to Garrett Toy, director of city Business Assistance and Housing Services.
The Acevedos plan an on-site microbrewery where they will brew handcrafted specialty beers and their popular non-alcoholic root beer and special sodas. El Toro’s regular beers, ales and stouts are made at the main brewery on Hill Road. Making the establishment into a place where Morgan Hill can gather with their families, the Acevedos also plan a full-service, moderately priced restaurant with “fun menus and menu items for kids,” they said.
Acevedo, a longtime rock hound, plans to imbed the 25-foot long arced bar top with bits and slabs of distinctive poppy jasper, the rock unique to the Morgan Hill area. Deep red rock grindings, left over from slab preparations, would be mixed, along with bits and pieces, into concrete on the front patio slab.
The couple was excited about the police building’s potential, from the bank vault that would serve as a private banquet room, to a balcony giving foosball and darts fanatics a place to practice their art away from the hustle and bustle of food and drink service. Before it housed police, the building was the Bank of America and the vault remains. The police department uses it to store files.
An El Toro Brew Pub would also have a stage and a dance floor for music later in the evening.
The Acevedos estimate that renovation would cost nearly $2 million and take four to six months from signing on the dotted line for the building, through building permits, to opening. Acevedo, as a member of the Planning Commission, is familiar with permitting requirements.
The Acevedo’s architect, Exclaim Designs, is from Phoenix. Exclaim Designs works specifically with restaurant and hospitality industry designs. Exterior elevations – the building’s front and sides – would incorporate brick with “designer plaster”, plenty of glass, all topped with El Toro’s distinctive sign.
Toy said the City Council/Redevelopment Agency will likely not choose between the two dueling plans before the end of the year.
