The new Calhoun’s Restaurant in Oak Ridge could open on Wednesday, June 22, 2016, although plans are subject to change. Above, the restaurant was under construction in mid-April at the former site of Riverside Grille on Melton Lake Peninsula in east Oak Ridge. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Plans could change, but for now, the new Calhoun’s Restaurant in Oak Ridge plans to open Wednesday, the company said Thursday.
The restaurant will be on Melton Lake Peninsula in east Oak Ridge, where Riverside Grille and Flatwater Grill used to be.
Oak Ridge Today first reported on the new restaurant in March, after Calhoun’s applied for a beer permit from the Oak Ridge Beer Permit Board.
The restaurant is owned by the Copper Cellar Corporation, which purchased the property from businessmen and developers Rick and Ryan Chinn in February.
The Chinns had owned the roughly seven-acre Melton Lake property for 10 years. They had a perpetual easement on it, which is like a long-term lease, from the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The Copper Cellar Family of Restaurants has owned the perpetual easement since February, including the land, the 12,000-square-foot building, and its parking lots.
Starting in 2007, the property, which is at the start of the 2,000-meter Oak Ridge rowing course, was home to Flatwater Grill. It was Riverside Grille for about four years.
There has been a lot of excitement in the community about the new restaurant opening, especially in conjunction with other planned developments in Oak Ridge. Those include a new Hobby Lobby store on South Illinois Avenue and the redevelopment of the former Oak Ridge Mall in central Oak Ridge. The mall redevelopment is known as Main Street Oak Ridge.
Here are a few tweets from the Calhoun’s Restaurant Twitter feed about kitchen and server training at the new restaurant.
Kitchen trg @calhouns Oak Ridge. It won’t be much longer. pic.twitter.com/nFUBnUBqTa
— bart fricks (@BCFricks) June 14, 2016
Server training for @calhouns in Oak Ridge pic.twitter.com/EAal41xr7N — bart fricks (@BCFricks) June 13, 2016
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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