51 Main St. could open post-Spring Break

Author: Anthony Adragna

The College hopes to offer several open houses for the as-yet-unnamed space at 51 Main St. before Spring Break, with a grand opening coming soon after students return, Dean of The College Tim Spears said.

Final designs for the space should arrive in the next couple of days and the College will order furnishings soon after. Items could take four to six weeks to arrive, enabling an opening soon after Spring Break.

Spears said the space will open up with its lead purpose of providing nighttime entertainment for students in mind.

"We will open as a bar and lounge on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights," he said. "The lead concept is a bar and lounge. We'll begin in a small way."

In addition to the bar and lounge aspect of the space, it will also function as a location during the day for community events, designed to enable contact between the community and College. Additionally, the area will have a chocolate bar where high quality chocolate products will be available.

Several small "soft openings" will likely occur before Spring Break to expose the space.

"We want a couple of open houses so people in the community can look at the space before it opens," Spears said. "We hope to show the town what we've done with the space. We'll take it from there."

Spears said the establishment already has an employment model and will begin looking to fill the slots.

"We have a staffing model in mind," he said. "It's fairly lean right now. We'll have someone to manage the space and others to do the counter. We'll expand the staff as necessary."

Students will have the ability to have input on the programming that takes place in the space.

"The programming that takes place during the nighttime will involve students," Spears said. "There's a timeline to get a group of students together in the next month or so."

Once completed, Spears hopes students will find the space inviting and very useful. "I hope students will go down there to work," he said. "I hope the space will speak for itself. I think the furnishings will work well in the space. The space itself is fantastic."

Spears dismissed the notion that the establishment would hurt existing town businesses like the Two Brothers Lounge.

"We talked with people about this issue from the beginning," he said. "My sense, from talking with students is that they think the town can support two bars. Offering more options for students socially is never a bad thing."