On the Board’s Search Efforts
for a Trumpets Operator
When I heard the Board was on the verge of doing due diligence in their search for a Trumpets operator, I thought it was a joke. But, sadly, no joke was intended. On the contrary, the Board is seriously considering prospective operators that had already been dismissed earlier as unqualified, along with one assumes equally unqualified prospects.
What due diligence should have meant to the Board was to summarily dismiss all of the newly surfaced want-a-be operators now under consideration and start over. Sloshing around in the trough of already rejected restaurant operators proves only one thing—namely, that our initial search efforts were not properly targeted.
Rather than relying on what operator interest happened to resurface after the Boulevard Group fiasco, isn’t it about time for the Board to take a more positive step and start fresh with a search effort conducted by a commercial real estate broker. Only then will we know the real scope of qualified potential restaurant operators from which to pick from. Only by doing so will the Board and the community have the assurance needed to establish that the Board's decision-making process was both reasonable and not flawed.
Is the Board so desperate to act precipitously that their efforts will have the potential of placing the whole community in jeopardy with an ill-conceived decision?
All we can expect from the Board is that they do the right thing. But for inexplicable reasons the right thing to do has apparently escaped their attention. Restricting their attention and options to a select few operators who just happened upon us without securing the knowledge of qualified operators who might be out there is simply the wrong thing to do. Some might go so far to suggest that restricting our efforts to a select few is actually a dumb thing to do.
Ronald Johnson, 23 November 2008