The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 14

www.delawareonline.com Ameritage Restaurant shutters doors Owner says Wilmington eatery not making enough money in poor economy By RYAN CORMIER The News Journal One of downtown Wilmington's respected kitchens has closed for good. Ameritage Restaurant Lounge, which opened in April 2008 at 900 Orange St. under its original name, Ameritage Bistro, shuttered its doors for the last time Saturday. The restaurant, which had previously been home to Brandywine Brewing was not making enough money to stay open in these tough economic times, said owner Michael Hynansky, who is also president of the Winner Automotive Group. "We had recently built a parking garage adjacent to Ameritage and we thought it would be helpful in drawing people into Wilmington," Hynansky said.

"But in the end, it wasn't enough." The 132-seat spot opened a few months before the economic downturn hit the United States hard in September. And while the restaurant had many loyal followers in town, there simply were not enough of them, Hynansky said. Ameritage featured rotating menus, allowing customers to dine on food from different regions every few months, featuring cuisine from countries like Brazil, Greece and Cuba. The restaurant also regularly hosted live music with local musicians like Tommy Conwell, Nate Farrar and Bruce Anthony performing at the downtown eatery. Just last month, the restaurant was called an "underappreciated downtown gem" by News Journal restaurant critic Eric Ruth in a dispatch from City Restaurant Week.

Hynansky owns the building and said it is available for lease. Contact Ryan Cormier at 324-2863 or rcomierdelauureonline.com. Read his pop culture Uog at www.deIawareonIine.compuIpcuIture or follow him on TWirter iyancormter. 8 News Journal file JENNIFER CORBfTT Ameritage Restaurant Lounge opened in Wilmington in April 2008. The D2-seat eatery featured a changing menu of cuisines from around the world.

B2 THE NEWS JOURNAL TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2009 I I Us. Racino: Action hinges on report JFC rejects nursing home cuts "If this was in New Castle County, and you were tryingto bring one company here with 1,000 jobs, they'd be bending over backwards to bring these people here." State Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach "This has been an issue that's been out there for five years," Jackson said. "I don't think there's any perfect answer to this. There's not." Cook said the JFC has asked the administration of Gov.

Jack Markell to go back and look for cuts that would equal what would be gained by closing the two hospitals. Proposals to close the hospitals date back to the administration of Gov. Mike Castle, who was elected to Congress in 1993 after serving two terms as governor. Then-Gov. Tom Carper, now Delaware's senior U.S.

senator, tried and failed as well. This most recent plan was contained i in the final budget proposed by outgoing Gov. Ruth Ann Min-ner. Ann Visalli, head of the bud- 'A get office, told the panel that they could consider closing one hospital and not the other, but that she didn't want to come before the JFC next year "and have the same discussion next year." "You can control that," Cook shot back. "You don't -have to put that in your proposed budget." Contact X.

Miller at 678-4271 or lmillerdelawareonline.com. tions. "This is an elderly population," Cook said. Sen. Bruce C.

Ennis, D-Smyrna, agreed, saying a move would have "a very negative impact on them." It also would force relatives and caregivers of patients at the two hospitals to drive to Smyrna to visit them, he said, and employees would have to commute to Smyrna. Gov. Bacon Health Center, in Delaware City, has a capacity of 90 residents, and there were 79 at the center as of May 20. Emily Bissell, in Milltown, has a capacity of 85, with a population of 68 as of the same date. The Hospital for the Chronically 111, meanwhile, has a capacity of 230, with a population of 211.

The proposed renovation would boost capacity to 343, which would fall 15 beds short of the current combined populations of the three institutions. "What you're really doing is making less beds available for those types of patients," Cook said. Michael Jackson, of the Office of Management and Budget, tried to defend the proposal. Two state-run centers survive latest proposal By J.L MILLER The News Journal DOVER The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee balked Monday at an administration proposal to close Emily P. Bissell Hospital and Gov.

Bacon Health Center, a move that would have saved the state $1 million next year. Patients from the two state-run nursing homes would have been moved to the Delaware Hospital for the Chronically Dl in Smyrna, which would have undergone a hurried renovation to accommodate them. Similar proposals have surfaced and been roundly rejected by legislators since the 1990s and Monday was no exception. Although no formal vote was taken, the legislators made it clear they were having no part of it, and they told budget officials to look elsewhere in the Department of Health and Social Services for cost savings. Sen.

Nancy Cook, D-Kenton and the JFC co-chair, said it would be disruptive to move patients from the two institu FROM PAGE Bl "If this was in New Castle County, and you were trying to bring one company here with 1,000 jobs, they'd be bending over backwards to bring these people here," Schwartzkopf said. "Who's he protecting? I don't know." Viola said the committee meeting was canceled because legislators need to focus on the budget with only four days left in the session. Viola and the Markell administration say that any decision on adding new casino licenses should wait until later this year, when a report comes back on the impact of adding new casino locations, administration spokesman Joe Rogalsky said. Viola said Del Pointe shouldn't be hurt by waiting. "If that facility is ready to go, then it should be ready to go the end of this year, or the very beginning of next year," he said.

"When the report comes back and says hey, this state can handle additional venues, let's rock and roll." Schwartzkopf said he isn't hoping for Del Pointe to win full legislative approval before next week, when the term ends. He just wants it to come out of com' mittee and be ready to go if Gov. Jack Markell calls a special legislative session later this year to address table gaming. creating several thousand jobs, bringing in more revenue for the state and protecting southern Delaware from a proposed slots venue just over the border in Maryland. It would bring in $75 million annually for the state, with $20 million offered up as a prepayment for this year's budget, developer Preston Schell said.

He touted the economic and jobs impact of the project in urging legislators to act. "The people of Delaware cannot continue suffering job loss, pay cuts and potential loss of their homes for another six months until a study is conducted," Schell said. Del Pointe was originally proposed to include a racetrack, simulcasting, a family hotel and a waterpark. But developers Schell and Gene Lankford, of the Ocean Atlantic family of companies, concluded it would only be financially feasible with the addition of slots. If construction were to begin this summer, the racetrack could be finished for a short season next year.

But if casino approval were to come this year, slot machines could be operating under a "temporary tent" option to start by the end of this year, developers have said. Contact Dan Shorfridge at 463-3338 or by Erskine, who reportedly urged Hamilton to "finish him off." After Hamilton's original statement to authorities, a witness reported that Aviles was in the truck at the time of the slayings and actually was the man who shot Moncrief. Two other men John Minker of Dover and Raymond J. Glaeser of Goldsboro, Md. -each pleaded guilty to single counts of tampering with physical evidence for their roles in burying the two bodies and each was sentenced to a year's probation.

Second-degree conspiracy charges against the two men were dropped by prosecutors. Contact James Merriweather at 678-4273 OTrnerriwea therdelawareonline.com. IS (ft I ft Panel: Seeking to drop Erskine: Bodies of men buried in Md. want to offend veterans by axing Veterans Day or Memorial Day. That left Good Friday and Martin Luther King Jr.

day, neither of which was politically viable to eliminate. "You can't take Martin Luther King Day because you know who's coming to work that day and who's staying home," said Rep. James "J.J." Johnson, D-New Castle. "It's too divisive." Eliminating three holidays would have saved about $1 million in overtime and other costs, but the JFC opted for two. That FROM PAGE Bl The elimination of two state holidays began as an administration proposal to do away with three holidays but JFC members found it impossible to decide which would be the third.

They essentially had a choice of doing away with Good Friday an important day to Christians or Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Lawmakers weren't about to pick a more widely observed hol-iday like Christmas or the Fourth of July, and they didn't Schwartzkopf has pushed for linking new casino approval with table games, saying that's the only way to push past the casino industry's opposition to additional venues. "No matter what the study says once they get table games, they have no reason to even agree to anything," Schwartzkopf said. The casino license is critical for Del Pointe, developers have said.

With the license, the project could be fully built out within five to seven years. But without slots, it would have to either be dropped or retooled under a much different site plan and a slower timeframe. The project has been pitched as a three-way win for Delaware State Police notified Delaware authorities that Hamilton had returned a pickup truck to his employer with a window shot out and blood inside. He told his employer that he shot two people in Delaware and buried the bodies in Maryland, later leading authorities to burial sites in Goldsboro, Md. Hamilton told authorities that he had picked up Ward and Moncrief and had driven them around Kent County to seek drugs, but that he got into an argument with them at a point west of Felton and shot them with a shotgun.

Investigators found that, before Moncrief died of the shotgun blast, Hamilton stabbed him in the chest and slit his throat with a knife provided (ti ft (I) (I II 'V If'1 if. i FROM PAGE Bl Witherell had moved for a new trial, citing the possibility that a juror exchanged words with relatives of the victims outside the courthouse during a break in Erskine's trial. Bailiff Kim Browning said, though, that jurors were "uncomfortable" walking between families of the victims and defendants and that, at one point, she merely asked the family members to disperse in deference to the jury. "At no time did jurors communicate with family members," she said, prompting Vaughn to rule from the bench that a new trial was not warranted. On June 6, 2006, Maryland II 7 ft NOTICE OF THE AVAILABILITY OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT The USDA Rural Development's utility programs (Rural Utilities Service) has received an application for financial assistance from Sussex County Council.

As required by the National Environmental Policy Act, the Rural Utilities Service has prepared an Environmental Assessment that evaluated the potential environmental effects and consequences of the proposed project. This notice announces the availability of the Environmental Assessment for public review and comment. The proposed project consists of: for the expansion of sewer to the newly formed Johnson's Corner Sanitary Sewer District, which is located within the West Fenwick Planning Area, which is within the larger South Coastal Planning Area. This includes approximately 37,000 linear feet of gravity sewer, 15,000 linear feet of force main, forty grinder pump units scattered throughout the district, and four pump stations. Wastewater from the service area will be collected and pumped directly to the Regional Pump Station in Fenwick Island (Pump Station 30) and the future Bayard Regional Pump Station.

The alternative considered to the proposed project is the do nothing alternative. This alternative does not address the health issues of continued use of septic systems on the environment. Copies of the Environmental Assessment are available for review at USDARural Development, 1 221 College Park Drive, Suite 200, Dover, Delaware 1 9904. For further information, please contact Denise E. MacLeish, Business Community Programs Director at (302) 857-3625.

Any person interested in commenting on this proposed project should submit comments to the address above by July 22, 2009. A general location map of the proposal is shown below. 2 holidays is expected to save about $668,000. In other developments re-, lated to the budget, nine bills were introduced in the House on Monday aimed at increasing taxes and fees for individuals and businesses in Delaware. They include a hike in personal income tax, restoration of an estate tax, a 10 percent hike in the gross receipts tax and higher corporate income taxes.

Contact Miller at 678-4271 or jlmiIlerdelawareonline.com. (O-000O378887) ''7wf I 'w'iii'y "i JOHNSON'S CORNER V-7-r II A Tffi WILMINGTON UNIVERSITY 0623, 23, 24 NJ.