Home > Blogs > Taste: Dayton food and restaurants > Archives > 2011 > January > 06 > Entry
Brown Street bar sells to hospital, will reopen nearby
Jimmie’s Cornerstone Bar and Grille at 1001 Brown St. will sell the property to Miami Valley Hospital and will move down the street to a former Dayton firehouse at 936 Brown St., hospital officials and the bar’s owner said this afternoon, Jan. 6.
Miami Valley signed a “letter of agreement to purchase” the existing Cornerstone Bar property on the Brown Street , and has agreed to renovate the former firehouse and sell it to the bar’s owners to accommodate the move, hospital officials said. Both Miami Valley Hospital spokeswoman Nancy Thickel and Cornerstone bar owner Jimmie Brandell declined to release the purchase prices involved in the upcoming property swap.
Retired Dayton-area businessman Tom Nugent recently donated the former Fire House No. 11 to MVH, hospital officials said.
Jimmie and Sue Brandell, who have operated the bar for nearly 10 years, will keep Jimmie’s Cornerstone open at its current location while renovations are continuing to the former firehouse. They expect to move sometime this summer and reopen under a new name: Jimmie’s Ladder 11, to honor the former fire station and the firefighters serving Dayton, Brandell said.
“I’m excited about it,” he said. “It’s a beautiful building. I think people who live in Dayton, and people who come to Dayton to visit, are going to want to go there.”
Renovations to the two-story structure, which has approximately 6,000 square feet of space, will include a new kitchen and adjacent customer parking to the north of the building, they said. Brandell said he intends to expand his dinner menu “beyond regular bar food” and will open for breakfast on weekends.
The current Cornerstone Bar seats about 85 people inside, and 60 on a patio. The new Jimmie’s Ladder 11 will seat 150 inside on two floors, and another 102 on two patios, Brandell said. He expects to hire as many as 30 more employees to bring total employment to 40 to 45 once the relocation is complete.
Miami Valley Hospital “has no immediate plans” for the 1001 Brown St. property after it is vacated, Thickel said. The building will likely be razed sometime after the relocation is complete, Thickel said.
Last fall, Miami Valley purchased the property next door to the bar that housed Wah Fu restaurant, which had operated on the site for nearly 20 years.
Miami Valley Hospital will continue to consider buying properties that are contiguous to its properties, Thickel said, but added that she knew of no other property-purchase announcements that are imminent.
The fire house where the Cornerstone is moving has deep historical roots, MVH officials said. It dates back to 1892 and was built to serve the South Park neighborhood. The fire house is believed to be one of the last Dayton fire houses to use horse-drawn apparatus. It was in continuous use until the new Fire House No. 11 opened nearby at 145 Warren Street in 1987. The City of Dayton sold the property to Nugent the same year, MVH officials said.
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