On November 15th, we signed a tentative lease for the property. We can't formalize the final lease until the LLC name comes back, because that needs to be included in the paperwork.
The gentleman we're working with is very old school – his lease is only three pages long. For the tentative agreement, he just wrote out a few things on a piece of paper as we talked through what we were agreeing to, and we signed the bottom, and made a couple of copies.
Afterwards, my wife and I realized that, exactly a year prior, we had put a deposit down on the home we now live in. Apparently, we like making agreements on November 15th. Of course, we were married on November 16th, so we like making agreements on that day, too.
At this point, the goal is to finalize the LLC, finalize the lease, finalize the floor plan, and get a name and design for the directory sign for the building. Here's the first draft we put together:
I think the kerning on the meeple “A” is a little off, and the stroke may need to be a little thicker, but the idea is to make it clean and clear, since this is what folks will see when they drive by the store. We've also revised the floor plan a bit.
The basic layout is the same, though we now know we can use the mop sink for customers. We're going to have a stainless steel one installed, to go with the exposed duct work look. We've also added measurements.
The back area (with two tables) is sized to allow for some flexibility. One thing we've discussed is putting in a pool table (and a ping pong table top) to add a little flexibility to the activities. We'd also have to get a top built for it so we could use it as a gaming surface as well.
Also, in looking around, it looks like we're going to want slatwall installed along the perimeter of the store. I think we'll still space them out a bit, rather than having wall-to-wall slats, but we'll see.
