Interesting article with Qdoba

http://villevoiceeats.com/

"Wink, wink...nudge, nudge......here is the extra $50,000 that Cordish didn't need"

Whe we owned our business, we could not get any "forgivable" loans from the city. We were building a local business in an underserved area and protecting a historic property. Not a dime, or even help when we listed the property on the National Historic Register. I guess we should have changed our name to "Cordish"!

Ah the Loophole....I don't think that this is what they had in mind when they came up with these "forgivable" loans....I think they have to stay in business for five years and the whole loan is written off as I understand it...I think there is a small fee that you pay monthly but nothing compared to the interest that you would have to pay a bank for a comparable loan(if you could get one).Pretty shrewd business move on thier part but I think they probably could afford to open another location with out the loan from the city. I'm not a big Qodoba fan to begin with and this makes me a little hot under the collar....

The whole METCO process is well . . . I don't know. I've been through it. I wanted to open a small bakery on Oak St in Old Louisville. I didn't get the loan and therefore didn't open at that location. The refusal said that people in Old Lou wouldn't buy special occasion (birthday) and wedding cakes. The cycle I was in awarded $ to three other small businesses,all of whom closed pretty quickly, and one may never have made it to opening day. My biz is doing well. Go figure.

The relatively new Lowes on Bashford Manor also got one of those loans. The purpose of the loans is to create jobs and no little homegrown mom and pop operation can compete with the number of jobs created by Lowes, or a Qdoba store. Still, as a micro biz, I'd like to see the city give the little guys more of a leg up, or possibly some relief from regulations. Not relief from general safety or food safety, of course.

Personally, I have no objection to the loan to Qdoba. They are probably investing upwards of one million to buildout the space and I'm sure a pretty penny for the exhaust system through an 8 floor building. Most likely, the expensive of the exhaust system may have been something that may have kept them from moving forward on the project but the incentive from the city persauded them to move forward. A very small start up small business probably wouldn't have the resources/financing to undertake this project.