LopezRocks - Item

Dear Friends of the Galley,

We know many of you have reached out asking for an update on the Galley and we hope that this note can shed a little bit of light on our current status. Please know that we greatly appreciate many of the comments shared on social media and elsewhere that reflect encouragement, understanding, patience, and optimism for our project. We also appreciate the April Foolâ€™s Day "Golden Arches" fun. All these things inspire us to keep moving forward in good humor and with a positive attitude.

For many weeks we have wanted to message the greater Lopez community and hope to use this forum as our primary way to provide future updates.

First and foremost, please know that our aim has never changed - which is to re-open the restaurant in a new and exciting way that the entire community will enjoy for years to come. We want the future Galley to be clean, safe and really fun for people of all agesâ€"not to mention we want it to serve great food. And while there has not been much visible activity on the site, there has been a great deal of time and effort behind the scenes working to figure out how we can move this project forward in a thoughtful and contemporary way.

With the Galley, we have come to expect the unexpected. We began our work just a month before COVID entered our lives and without sharing too many longwinded details, our biggest challenge has been the structure itself. When we set out with our plan, our goal was to configure the restaurant in a way that was similar to its original layout. This of course was easier said than done and as we started peeling back the layers, we found ourselves faced with significant structural and unexpected conditional challenges that required remediation. This has of course not only slowed our progress, but in several instances has compelled us to review our design vision with the goal of trying to come up with a sensible and economical way to bring the structure up to current code.

To make matters more complex, in the late fall of 2020, the earth shifted above the restaurant and there was a landslide above the South retaining wall causing the wall structure to lean in towards the restaurant. We had no other option but to deem this area unsafe for work and have paused while we determine how to best address the reconstruction/retrofit of this wall. Work on this structure will require warmer and dryer weather and we have slated September as the best month to begin dismantling and rebuilding it.

The last noteworthy part of our project that we believe is worth mentioning relates to the conversation that many are having about the future of restaurants in general in the post-pandemic era. We want to make sure that whatever version of the Galley we build, that it is one that is takes into account the transformation that is rapidly occurring in our industry. As many of us may know, the restaurant industry faced devastating losses due to COVID. And while some of our favorite spots survived (and in some cases thrived) far more were forced to close their doors permanently. With this in mind, we have been asking some really important questions along the way, all of which have significant impact on our project and how we consider completing our build-out. Questions like whether restaurants should have greater outdoor seating capacity and/or flex space? Will social distancing be a permanent requirement for indoor spaces and what does that mean in terms of guest capacity? Should all restaurants be equipped to serve in a contactless manner? Should we be better equipped for take-out? All of these questions - and so many more - are on the forefront of our minds as we consider how our original vision of the Galley needs to adapt to be sustainable for the future.

Please know we hope to continue to provide updates when we have meaningful information to share. And if you see us onsite, please stop by and say hello. Your positive words of encouragement and support truly do make a difference.

Sincerely,

The Galley Team