Developer seeks community entertainment district for Valor Acres; council directs law director to draft ordinance

Attorney John Neal told Brecksville City Council on March 4 that VA Vesta 2 LLC has applied to establish a state-authorized community entertainment district (CED) for the Valor Acres development, a roughly 71.6-acre mixed-use site in the city’s southern corridor, and that the CED would make up to 14 additional full-service (D-5J) liquor permits available to businesses located inside the district.

The CED “creates a pot of liquor permits to the side of your existing quota,” John Neal said. He explained those permits are issued by the Ohio Division of Liquor Control and “never and cannot leave the boundaries of that CED.”

The proposal, presented by Neal and developer Kevin Deidreno of Deidreno Companies, is intended to help attract restaurants, a hotel and a grocery tenant by removing a key market barrier: Brecksville’s standard D-5 quota is currently exhausted. Neal said the city’s quota is based on population and that, without a CED, prospective tenants often must buy an existing permit on the open market or seek a transfer (a “Trex”) that can leave the city’s control.

Why it matters: Proponents said the CED will make the Valor Acres project more competitive for national and regional operators, lower the time and cost for those tenants to obtain on-premise liquor authority, and therefore increase the likelihood of higher-end restaurant and hospitality tenants. Opponents and several council members raised concerns about concentrating liquor-serving uses in the city’s south end and about how…