Columbus auto dealer Chris Haydocy got tired of waiting for someone else to make good on the opportunity for a restaurant row near the West Side casino.
So Haydocy is building a gourmet food park on land he owns on W. Broad Street in front of the casino “to create a neighborhood gathering spot with a community atmosphere offering a variety of great food and reasonable pricing,” he said.
Over time, his Hollywood & Broad Gourmet Food Park is expected to host several vintage Airstream RVs outfitted as gourmet food trucks that employ 20 people. The first truck, Land Yacht BBQ, will open at the park “as soon as the weather breaks” in the spring, he said.
“We’ve been working on this for several years,” said Haydocy, who is president of Weston Vision, an economic-development organization on the West Side. He also owns both Haydocy Automotive, a Buick and GMC dealership, and a new Airstream dealership near the casino.
Haydocy envisions a patio dotted with picnic tables, an indoor dining hall ringed by aluminum-clad Airstreams from past decades, and a Las Vegas-style marquee. He patterned his park after others, including SoMa StrEat Food Park in San Francisco.
He got the idea from studying a 2011 economic-development strategy report that identified redevelopment opportunities around the emerging Hollywood Casino Columbus.
“A restaurant cluster to the north of the casino provides a strong opportunity for short-term revitalization along Broad Street,” Robert Charles Lesser & Co., a Washington, D.C., real-estate consultancy, wrote in its report. “Market analysis suggests that there is unmet demand for at least four new restaurants in the study area.”
This demand was expected to grow after the casino opened. “A restaurant cluster would fill a gap in the local marketplace, provide an early win in the revitalization effort, and build investor confidence in the area,” the consultants said.
“We thought that a restaurant would be successful at the site if it were unique to central Ohio” so it could draw from outside the area, said Chris Boring, principal at Boulevard Strategies, the Columbus retail consultancy.
The food should be upscale, but not too expensive, Boring said. And the restaurant should open for lunch to serve the 22,000 workers who are within five minutes of the site, he said.
For two years, no one stepped forward to build a restaurant on the identified site. So Haydocy, who owned two Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants in North Carolina in the early 1990s, outfitted a 1963 Airstream travel trailer as a gourmet kitchen to launch the park.
“We want to appeal to all the senses,” he said. “First and foremost, taste,” with apple or hickory-wood-smoked pulled pork, Texas-style brisket, St. Louis-style ribs, and even smoked macaroni and cheese.
Haydocy hired chef Brian Young as general manager of the food-truck business.
“Columbus is a rapidly growing food-truck oasis,” said Franklin County Commissioner John O'Grady, citing the increase from a handful of trucks a few years ago to a few hundred.
“No. 2, it’s a great thing for that particular part of town,” O’Grady said. “The West Side is re-emerging and redeveloping.”
“Chris’ project is innovative and truly the type of creative spark the area needs,” said James Schimmer, director of the Franklin County Economic Development and Planning Department.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2014/01/28/casino-area-food-truck-park-planned.html
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