Digging deeper

My crack team of architects and engineers have submitted plans to Tempe (almost a month late) and even more impressively delivered a set to me! For a while now we have had a permit for demolition but soon we can actually start building. But only after demolishing more than we expected however. Last week we had a visit from City of Tempe water department. Everyone I've met at the city so far has been extremely courteous and has gone out of their way to be helpful…. until the visit by the water department. Bottom line, without the gory details, is that we have to dig up about 25% of our kitchen floor to re route drain lines that are buried up to five feet deep. We have a giant jacuzzi-sized grease trap buried behind the building and certain pipes need to be routed to it to collect excess grease so it doesn't end up in the city sewer system. Unfortunately for us the code has changed as to which drains need to go there. Some of the work is reasonable and logical, but when it was pointed out to me that I have to spend thousands of dollars to plow up a perfectly tiled kitchen floor to install drains to collect the greasy residue from an ice machine and a lettuce washing sink, well its mindless bureaucracy at its worst.

That set me up for an unexpected inspection visit from the Tempe fire department. My jaw tightened when I drove up and saw the truck in the parking lot, but his demeanor was the polar opposite and he was nothing but helpful and constructive in helping me understand exactly what needed to be done. A smile and a handshake later I felt good about Tempe again. Now that I have plans I am scrambling to line up subs for concrete, wrought iron, a good technical guy to help with the electronics of the building (surveillance, phone, pos and sound systems) an upholsterer, and a welder (for stainless work) If anyone knows someone who fits the bill have them email me at AZjobpost@aol.com.

From the ground up

Let me tell you about the beautiful wood floors in our dining rooms. Well, actually they used to be beautiful many years ago. They are the genuine thing; thick natural strips of oak laid plank by plank, sanded smooth and finished in place. Its almost impossible to find a floor like this anymore outside of a private home so we were shocked when we peeled up the carpets and discovered them. Now to refinish them. I've complained about money before so it won't surprise you to know we had no money in the budget to bring in a professional to restore them. It takes peeling off the carpet, scraping off layers of glue, endless hours of sanding through the old varnish and stain, and finally restaining and varnishing. JVG convinced me that he and our crew could do the work ourselves. Looking back I realize it was the tightness of our budget talking to me and not his prowess as a finish craftsman. JVG has an unbelievable range of skills but fine finish work is not one of them. (He also has almost zero technical savvy so I can feel free trash talking him here where he will never know it) Anyway, after a week of dousing the floor with random solvents, scraping and mostly gouging the wood I put a halt to the action and placed an emergency ad on Craig's list and begin weeding my way through the 20 or so craftsmen who applied for the job within 24 hours of placing the ad. We settled on Earl from Winslow. More about the unusual nature of Earl in later posts, but after all was said and done he did an amazing job at an amazing price. He is finished with 75% of the floors in only a week and is coming back this weekend to finish the job (fingers firmly crossed) Pictures don't do it justice but the floors are gorgeous, maybe too gorgeous for humble old RigaTony's - but we'll let you be the judge.

A rewarding Thanksgiving diversion

Just a quick post to acknowledge my crew for their excellent work in helping to provide a Thanksgiving feast to needy Chandler residents at the Chandler Boys and Girls Club. Iguana Mack's and RigaTony's has been providing food for this event for 12 years and this year was special because it represented the christening of their new facility. We had a huge turn out - over 700 people were fed who otherwise would not have the benefit of a holiday dinner.

A moment of calm

Today feels like the eye of the hurricane. Weirdly I have no appointments today but every upcoming day for the next week will be building to chaos. Monday alone I have 4 meetings, one with my technical guy to review the wiring plan for the restaurant. We need to wire for surveillance cameras, sound equipment, telephone locations and point of sale locations. Then a meeting with our retail group to launch our new retail campaign which I will explain later, another plan review meeting with architect, designer and contractors, and then a tour of the brand new Boys and Girls Club facility where we will be feeding close to 1000 needy people a Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday next week. So today is left to planning and making preparations at home here for the 60 -70 friends and family that will be joining Chrissy and me for thanksgiving, which is by the way our anniversary (any creative suggestions for that shopping duty are welcome!).

Through all of it I have to push my architect to get his work done and get these construction plans into the city. We can't start construction until the city approves our plans and its getting very tight. Our lease ends in Chandler on March 30th of 2010, so we must be open before then. According to my plan there should be only be three days in March when Baked RigaTony is not available. Its up to my architect to make sure that doesn't turn into a month or more. (Are you reading this Todd?!!!!)

I have been emailed a question through this post as to when we are opening in Tempe and my best guess is March 17th. The new location is something I neglected to document here as well. It is at 1850 E Warner Road on the NE corner of McClintock and Warner Road. It used to be a 3 Margaritas Restaurant.

We can't do any construction yet but here's some destruction of a fine looking fireplace that was in the entry of the restaurant.

I have discovered that I am not a natural blogger. I was never one for journals or photo albums either so it shouldn't have been a surprise. Nevertheless I am going to regroup as we enter the complex construction phase and post at least several times a week to document the evolution of this project.

Here's a brief recap of what we've been working on in the last few weeks.

We've completed our exterior elevation plan and submitted drawings to Tempe for approval. They initial reaction seemed positive, but we'll see when we get comments back hopefully in a few days. Our landlord had to sign off on the plan as well, and they were very enthusiastic. I'll post the actual exterior elevations as soon as we get approval.At the same time we've completed our construction plans and are fine tuning everything before turning them into the city as well. We're behind about two weeks on this and I have to admit that I'm nervous about being behind on something that we had so much time to do. The construction plans include a complete revamp of our heating and ac system, a total redo on the kitchen, all new surfaces in the dining rooms and bar, and of course the construction of a new building facade and a patio.I've continued to purchase equipment for the kitchen and bar and recently scored on an awesome 30 gallon steam jacketed tilting kettle which to our chef is like moving up from a bicycle to a Masseratti. We have also been interviewing trades to select who we want when we start building. Sign painters, concrete, paint, electrical contractors etc....Another interesting development is the addition of a Doctor to our staff. More about that later.

In the mean time here are a couple of pictures. One is of JVG and Greg gingerly moving the old Mesa RigaTony's neon sign from where its been stored in my backyard to the repair shop. (note: I've never used "JVG" and "gingerly" in the same sentence before). The next is a shot of what happened moments later. No just kidding, but its a funny sequence. The truck turned over in front of the restaurant the other day when we were doing demo inside. No one was hurt.

We're having a Vine Time

The clock is ticking and we're mostly going back and forth from our architect to our designer through interminable design meetings. The project isn't that complicated its just that; 1.) We want to create an incredible impression 2.) We are adding several new elements to the concept, and 3.) As is true with almost everyone today - we have a very tight budget. But finally yesterday we made our final decisions on what the outside of the building and patio will look like, and are very close on an exciting floor plan that does everything we want it to do. Now its up to the architect to turn them into plans that the city can review. I'll post elevations in the next couple of weeks after we turn them into the city. In the meantime one of our objects is to introduce lots of vegetation to the patio we're going to build and an "Italian Patio" translates to lots of vines. It may look a little underwhelming but above is a picture of the start of our "vine farm" that Chrissy started in our backyard. We will probably double or triple the size in the coming weeks so we can get a head start on getting some mature plants in place by our opening in the spring. I've also been skulking about on craigslist looking for restaurant equipment deals. Here is an antique service desk - perhaps from a hotel that I found and that we will be using in our take-out area, and also pictured below is a retro looking refrigerated deli case that we will be using in our retail section. I found them both in Casa Grande of all places and they're now safe and sound at the new restaurant. Yesterday I went to central phoenix to buy a used back bar refrigerator and negotiated on some new but liquidated bar stools. I have a list of about 30 items that I have budgeted to buy and my object is to find them for less than the budget calls for, because its inevitable that we'll have some big budget surprises down the road. So far so good though. We are planning to replace the entire 20 year old HVAC system with a brand new system of three state-of-the-art humongous AC units, and we just got what i think will be the winning bid yesterday. I was going to tell you how much it is for but we haven't awarded it yet. Weirdly, however, the bid matches our budget almost to the dollar. Hmmmm .... makes me think that I better keep a closer eye on who I let see that budget.

Finally a deadline

I'm back from my second vacation and probably the last break I'll have for quite a while. Its been a hectic week getting back into the groove mending the minor catastrophes with the two restaurants that have happened over the last two weeks. In addition we have a new menu rolling out at Iguana Mack's next week that I've been working with my graphic artist and Chef Jason on, I had an always stressful meeting at the Chandler Planning and Zoning department to get approval for our liquor license extension, we've solicited several air conditioning companies for bids for the new RigaTony's and negotiated the final details on the architects contract for work on RigaTony's. Part of that contract calls for us to submit our ideas for the exterior design by Mid September - just two weeks away. To that end we met again with Kim & Howard - just like past meetings but new there's the pressure of a deadline and the commitment to one single design.

We met for a couple of hours comparing ideas and reviewing tons of photos that Chrissy has been collecting like mad. I think we ended up with a great exterior design and now Kim will go to work doing some photo-shop magic to crank out some renderings so we can get an idea how the final facade will work. Just for fun I submitted a hand drawn rendering of my own today. Don't' panic - its nothing close to what we'll end up with...

The Boss is back

We're back in town and frantically trying to catch up from vacation. Meetings next week with potential architects and our first official design meeting as well. I'll fill in more details when I have time to breathe. In the meantime Jenny graced us with her presence and here she is hamming it up in our plush office.

Vacation!

Chrissy and I are off on weeks vacation. Any requests for pictures of Barcelona?

It was a dark and stormy night...

Chrissy I drove over to the restaurant during a lull in last nights storm to see if there were any leaks in the ceiling. We were concerned because it was the first real storm since we took possession and Tempe was getting hammered with huge amounts of rain and high winds. We could see a half dozen trees ripped out of the ground in our shopping center alone. The electricity had gone out at the house for almost two hours.
As we unlocked the front door and shut off the alarm I realized immediately that I should have brought some buckets. There were three steady leaks in the dining room, one in the men's bathroom, and a couple outright waterfalls in the kitchen. The roof over the kitchen is flat and it serves as a platform for all of the mechanical equipment like air conditioners and exhausters. I had already inspected the roof and I knew that all of the equipment was ancient. The exhaust fans are rusted, the condensers for the walk-in coolers are filthy and useless looking and the AC units are huge 20 year old dinosaurs. The roof looked like a junkyard and the surface itself is cracked and blistered and needs to be completely redone, so its no surprise that streams of water are working their way down into the building with relative ease. As I wandered around in that dark steamy building, peering into shadowy corners with a flashlight I could hear dripping sounds all around, and I felt a gorge of panic welling up inside me. A little voice in my head called out "What have you gotten yourself into!"

"Hot" Prospect

I called a meeting on Friday morning 10-17 for the purpose of interviewing an architect that was recommended to me. We are seated here reviewing plans, outlining our scope of work and what role we need an architect to provide. From left to right there is a mechanical engineer (forgot his name!), Howard our contractor, our own JVG, and Joshua Oelher from Arcone Associates who is basically trying to impress us, and actually doing a pretty good job. Across from Joshua is my seat and if you look close you can see a clipboard with a gizmo watch on it (mine of course). It is a fancy altimeter watch and during the course of the three hour meeting I checked the thermometer function on the watch and it read 97 degrees. As you can tell we are definitely on the summer energy saver plan.

Reality Check

This story has a point if you hang in there.

Part of the culture of our company includes community involvement. We participate in fundraisers and charitable events throughout the year. I won't list what we do in detail but they range from our annual Thanksgiving Dinner for 500 people at the Boys and Girls Club, to fundraisers for the Maricopa County animal shelter, which bizarrely culminates with 100 people having lunch with their dog on Iguana Mack's patio. One of our Managers, Laura Arias volunteers for every event and brainstormed a new one that was unveiled Thursday night. It was a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Foundation and in simplest terms it consisted of volunteers from our staff dressing up as "celebrities" and ultimately donating all of their tips to the charity. RigaTony's would kick in 10% of any sales we would do that night. To be honest I now admit that I had trouble wrapping my head around this one right up until the time the doors opened. It seemed a little half-baked, a little silly and I was doubtful that our guests would figure it out or have fun with it.

It can be disturbing when I realize how wrong I can be. My first realization was when I got there at about 6:oo pm, couldn't find a parking space and had to park on the street. The place was packed. We're talking about a mid-July, random Thursday night in the middle of a financial melt-down, and we're on a wait. My next clue was the TV crew that arrived from channel 10 to cover the "event". I picked up a tray and started busing tables and thus was able to overhear comments by the staff and customers. Sarah Palin (aka Stephanie - our GM) was explaining to a table that it took a while to get them their butter because she had to go to Russia to get it. Could they have another glass of wine? "You Betcha!" People were laughing, engaging, pointing and grossly over-tipping. The entire building was filled with a Mayberry vibe and suddenly I felt like Barny Fife.

As I walked around our cheesy little restaurant I questioned myself about what makes this restaurant feel like this. What are the elements that give this business this small town feel, this feeling of community, this ability to communicate so personally with our guests. Is it the vintage linoleum floor tile, the random table types, the hand made curtains with fabric from Wal-mart, the postage-stamp-sized lobby? Whatever it is, nights like this make me realize more than ever that I have to be able to identify it, pack it up carefully, and seamlessly reproduce it 5 miles down the road. I don't think I have felt any more pressure to be carefully creative than I did Thursday night.

At any rate Laura's event was a huge success. She (AKA Dora the Explorer) was grinning from ear to ear all night as she ripped around the restaurant. At the end of the night we inked a check to the Breast Cancer Foundation for $1,998.

Time Travel to Tempe

I got a call from Michael Williams at the City of Tempe who said they had reproduced some old construction plans and they were ready for me to pick up. I was surprised they still had copies of construction documents from the late 80's when our building was built. He told me they stored documents from the 60's! Think about that. That means they must be storing plans for 75% of every structure in Tempe - and some have been rebuilt 2 or 3 times over. Whats even more incredible is how they store them. Have you ever seen an old black and white movie where the detective researches newspaper articles with a back-lit micofilm viewer? The public library in my hometown of Syracuse used to have one of those gizmos that I fooled with with when I was a kid. They are collectors items now, in a day when we can access the Library of Congress on our laptops at any Starbucks. Except... that's what Tempe still uses! Its kind of charming in a way. The results aren't so good however. Lots of the documents are smudged and the resolution is poor, but hey! - they delivered, fast and with a smile to boot. Here is Suzanne Garrido who worked hard to produce my huge stack of documents sitting at their hack-proof microfilm reader (sorry Ryan!)

Independance Day Trek

This post has nothing to do with the process of building a restaurant, but hey - its a holiday. Chrissy and I hike at South Mountain park every day. Needless to say it is difficult during the summer, but the 4th of July presents a special challenge; The park closes its parking lot gate to all visitors. Unless you happen to drive a motorcycle which can squeeze around the parking grate. Its cool to have thousands of acres to yourself and overlook a city of millions at the same time. Sometimes we find a lookout and look down on a half dozen fireworks displays at once. This year we just did a sunset hike.

Video Tour - Part 3 - The Kitchen

Video Tour - Part 2 - Bar and east dining room

Video Tour part 1

John and Greg were busy getting the restaurant cleaned up from being hastily vacated months ago, and they had it pretty well underway so I took this opportunity to film a brief tour so we can rememmber what the starting point was. This is the first of two parts.

The Hutson and Alyssa Show

Not too much activity today except that Michael Williams called from the City and said that he had already discovered our plans in the City's archives and would work on reproducing them for us to pick up next week. Also I called the City Utilities department and asked about our water turn-on situation. They assured me that our water was turned on yesterday as arranged. I sent John Van Gundy (aka JVG) our company handyman over to check it out and with the simple twist of the wrist to an outside valve he got it flowing. I had walked around the building twice yesterday and I didn't see any $%&$ valve! He gave me one of his condescending smiles when he told me about it. The big news of the day however was that Alyssa, our company Marketing Guru was able to arrange for us to do a TV cooking demonstration on Good Day Arizona. We asked Chef Hutson to prepare the Pasta Trio entree that we are running as our summer dinner promotion. They both described the studio as a chaotic scene with a new producer, and they had just a few moments to get situated for the cooking segment before the cameras started rolling. Hutson said that Alyssa frantically had her dress hitched up to snap her wireless mic onto her underwear just moments before they went live. That would have eclipsed the Michael Jackson coverage if that had aired. Even with that, the spot went great! They both handled the pressure like real pros and moments after the show ended we got a call from a woman who booked a reservation for twelve for the Pasta Trio dinner tomorrow night.

City Hall

Howard, Russell and I went to City hall this morning, the upside down pyramid by ASU, to meet with city planning officials. The meeting was arranged in advance by Chris Anaradian - Manager of Development Services and also attending was Lisa Collins (Planning Director) and Michael Williams (Deputy Development Services Director). We all met in a conference room and I gave them an approximate scope of work. We're not tearing the building down so we don't need a complete set of architectural plans, but we need permits for things I didn't realize, like a new water heater, and replacing air conditioners. Most of our interior work is cosmetic when it gets right down to it. Lots of cosmetic, but stuff that doesn't require permits, like floors, paint, upholstery, seating etc. We will need a new ceiling plan and a lighting plan.

Michael is going to go through the city archives to look for plans for the building - for which we have zip. We also discussed the patio - which will need to be reviewed by Lisa's department, and we have to make sure in advance that the parking lot can support the additional seating of a patio. The meeting was super-productive and I think we all have a clear vision of what we're required to do. We aren't close to a design but we know what to do when we have one. All three officials were cordial and helpful and played along with the above staged photo-op where it looks like I'm making a big presentation. The plans I'm pointing to are unrelated to our project and just happened to be laying around. If you zoom onto the picture you'll see the plans say 2 CAR GARAGE.

Later in the afternoon I unlocked the restaurant for Emily and Carina, two budding designers from Kim's office, because they needed to re-measure THE ENTIRE BUILDING to complete their floor plan. It must have been over 100 degrees in there and Emily is extremely pregnant but they spent the hottest hours of the day in there measuring every possible dimension in the building. I wimped out after a while and came back later to let them out. They were all smiles and WAY more enthusiastic than I was. While I was there I checked to see if the water had been turned on as promised by the City…. It wasn't. I tried to call the city but my face was so sweaty that pressing my face against my new Blackberry Storm caused the phone to seize. I hate this phone.

Elevation Time

I met with Dan from Ecolab, our pest control company at 7:00 am this morning and developed a construction schedule to take care of our creepy friends. We are scheduled to have the water turned on tomorrow and can then begin cleaning the place up later this week. I recieved a rendering from Kim Dalton of Dalton Interiors. Just a first draft idea of how the building might look with the front fake log work removed, adding a simple patio, awning etc.... Its a nice start and if you zoom in on the patio you'll see me and JVG hanging out. Makes it even more surreal than it already is! I will try to do a complete video and photo tour before we do anything substantial inside. It really isn't bad. I've been in restaurants that are open for business and are much dirtier than this is. Tommorrow my contractor Howard is going with me to the City of Tempe for our first meeting with the city. This should be interesting....

The big reveal

Today Chrissy and I held a meeting with the Managers and we told them for the first time what was in store for RigaTony's, and ultimately for them. I had expected them to be happy about the move, but they were practically jumping out of their seats with excitement. Laura especially. She kept interrupting me saying "Can we go there? Can we go now?!" Which is what we ended up doing. I took them on a tour of the building giving them an overview of the plan - which is all I actually have right now! Steph was just wowed by the place, especially the patio plan, and Hutson had some bizarre décor ideas which I won't disturb you with. It was hot and muggy and pretty oppressive inside the building but its so exciting we hardly noticed.
We talked about how and when to tell our customers about the move. It’s the scariest part to me because information gets garbled so easily and "RigaTony's is moving" will inevitably get translated into "RigaTony's is closing!" It could be a disaster as we're at least 9 months from the move and I can visualize people not coming for dinner because RigaTony's is closed!!! I have a plan for communicating this clearly that which we discussed at length which, as it happens, includes this blog.
While we were taking pictures of the outside a couple pulled up to have lunch. We told them the restaurant wasn't open and Laura launched into a hard sell for Iguana Mack's which included a discount card.

A new beginning

Fifteen years ago in 1994 I signed a lease on a run down decrepid building on the corner of Knox and Arizona Ave in Chandler. It had been a Golden Corral Restaurant, and then a series of failed Mexican restaurants. Being a New York Italian I had always wanted to open a little neighborhood Italian joint and I had been eyeing the corner for serveral years. It seemed about the right size and it was really close to my other restaurant, Chops. Finally I drove by and saw a white paper posted to the front door which pretty much always pronounced the death of a restaurant, and I quicky called the landlord so I could roll the dice and try to succeed where others had failed. I signed the lease and later that day began a careful inspection. The place was a catastrophy. The windows were painted black and protected by pool fencing. The bar was made of corrugaged steel and chicken wire. The floors were chipped and painted concrete and adorned with cheap plastic furniture. Cockroaches outnumbered whatever customers they had by 10 to 1. The electrical panels were disassembled and taken apart and hazardously wired to run backwards so electric generators could run the lights when the power company shut the place down. My friends and family thought I was crazy, but I had an undeserved and probably very naive confidence in the property and six months later RigaTony's was born. We struggled in the beginning, but ultimately succeeded and prospered beyond any expectation.

I never dreamed back then that the fifteen year lease I signed would slowly slip away with me still being in that building, and doing more business than ever before. Hell, I had just turned 40 and still at the stage where fifteen years seemed like infinity. How fast it all goes by. In the last few years I have seen the last day of the end of our lease inexorably approaching. Choices? I had several. Renew the lease for X many more years? Retire and do nothing? Or move our beloved institution to another location.

None of these choices seemed all that great. Its a long long story but our landlord is a complete and utter nightmare to deal with. If I was a novelist I would employ his character as a world class villian, and only an iron-clad lease has protected us from him for the last decade and a half. I made a couple attempts to negotiate, but I quicky realized that it was pointless. Retire and kill RigaTony's? Well, at 57, I'm still a youngster and some people are just starting to hit thier prime at my age. Besides I love my job and I think I am just now finally getting good at this. Besides if I killed RigaTony's I'd get even more death threats than I did when I killed Chops. So over time I realized that no matter the difficulty, no matter the expense, RigaTony's would have to be moved, and at the start of this year Chrissy and I began the search for the perfect location.

Well, after months of searching I have been reminded that sometimes the answers to tough questions are a lot closer to home that you realize. I had, for quite a while been intrigued by a restaurant building that was less than a mile from my house in south Tempe, where I have lived since 1993. When I moved to the neighborhood the the building was operating as a JB's restaurant, for which it was originally designed. It was then reincarnated as a Timberlodge Steakhouse. That didn't last more than a couple of years and then became a failing Mexican Restaurant. Does anyone besides me see a pattern here? This time I approached the landlord BEFORE the restaurant closed and just today we recieved the keys to our brand new, beat up old restaurant.

The restaurant has been closed up for a couple of months now and as I inspect the inside of the building I breath in the stale greasy frangrence of fried tortillas, inspect the cracked and vandalized windows, and dodge the occasional scurrying cockroach. And yet all I feel the thrill and exhillaration of a challenge. A challenge the likes of which I haven't felt for exactly 15 years.

This time I have committed myself to posting our progress on this project. The difference between now and 15 years ago is that I have thousands of loyal RigaTony's guests to whom I owe both our past success and and a concise communication about where we are going and how we're getting there. I am hoping this blog will give all of you a voice and an actual method of being involved in this project. After all, in a sense it's as much your restaurant as it is mine. I'm also willing to wager that the crazy ride between now and our grand opening will be at least a little entertaining. Thanks for reading - stay tuned!

Mike