Deal for $1.5 million still needs council approval
By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton University agreed to buy a liquor license from local restaurateur Jack Morrison for $1.5 million for the café and restaurant the school plans to open at the old Dinky station, records obtained by The Princeton Packet showed.
The two sides reached the deal last year, with the school now going through the legal formality of getting municipal officials to give their stamp of approval.
The university, through a limited liability company known as MTP Holdings, applied Jan.5 to the town clerk’s office for a liquor license transfer. The Princeton Council will need to vote to approve, although there is no date set for when that will occur.
Mr. Morrison was not immediately available for comment Friday. The liquor license the school is buying had been the one at the former Annex restaurant on Nassau Street and successor restaurants at that location.
The school is in the midst of redeveloping a portion of town in the Alexander Street and University Place section of Princeton. Two pieces of that $330 million project — calling for new campus buildings, a now opened new Dinky station, among other things — are a restaurant and a café at the old station.
The former train station buildings will be converted into eateries that would serve commuters, patrons of McCarter Theatre and others.
University spokesman Martin A. Mbugua on Friday dismissed a suggestion that the agreement between Mr. Morrison and the university meant that Mr. Morrison was going to be named the operator of the café and the restaurant. He said the sale of the liquor license and the selection of the operator are “separate.”
The school this month said the liquor license would be for the café and the restaurant, although paperwork the university’s lawyer filed with the town said it would be used “in conjunction with a full-service restaurant.”
The university had been in talks with the Terra Momo Group, run by brothers Carlo and Raoul Momo, to run the café and the restaurant. But on Jan.23, the school announced the two sides had failed to reach a deal.
In the ultra-competitive Princeton restaurant market, Mr. Morrison and the Momos are rivals.
Mr. Morrison’s restaurants in town include the Blue Pointe Grill on Nassau Street and the Witherspoon Grill in Hinds Plaza. For his part, Raoul Momo said Friday that he wished the university success on the project. “There’s no resentment. It was a business decision not to do the deal,” he said.
In terms of when the eateries open, Mr. Mbugua said that would be done in coordination with the still to be determined operator.
Mr. Mbugua said the arts and transit project remains on track and is going according to schedule. The school expects to be completed by the summer or fall of 2017.