Wine & Dine

Downtown Eateries Offer Flavorful, Fun Vibe

By Jay Gonzales

Opening a restaurant anywhere is always a gamble, but that hasn’t stopped dozens of entrepreneurs from doing so in Downtown Tucson, creating a vibe and a food mecca not seen there likely ever.

Young and old, established and newcomers, restauranteurs saw opportunity in the momentum generated in the mid-2010s by the Rio Nuevo Tax Increment Financing District, the modern streetcar on the way, and a confidence that downtown revitalization was real.

For some of the young − the Fenton siblings, Tyler, Courtney and Zach − all those factors were fine and well. But the family that grew up in Tucson saw more when they purchased the old Reilly Funeral Home in 2011 and converted it to a chic pizza restaurant on Pennington Street and Scott Avenue. It opened in 2012. The family also has a second downtown restaurant, BATA, at 35 E. Toole Ave.

The Fentons knew the streetcar was on the way, but when Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink opened, it was still two more years before the streetcar would start moving thousands of potential diners into downtown. They just sensed opportunity.

“I’ve lived here my entire life,” said Tyler Fenton. “The only time I came downtown was to maybe go to a concert. You’d come in, you’d get out. We were excited to be a part of helping to bring some life downtown and revitalize our downtown.

“Restaurants in general are very risky. I think you just maybe chalk it up (to the fact) we were super young. We were excited.”

Reilly is one of more than 30 restaurants in the Rio Nuevo District that have received some of the nearly $167 million investment into downtown through the TIF formed in 1999.

Not so young and new in the restaurant business is the Flores family, whose El Charro Café is an icon, not only downtown, not only among Mexican restaurants, but for all of Tucson.

El Charro, at 311 N. Court Ave., sits about a block outside of the Rio Nuevo District and hasn’t been able to partake in TIF funds, but the Flores family opened three restaurants inside the district. They recently combined two of them − Charro Steak and Charro del Rey − into one at 178 and 188 E. Broadway. The third restaurant is The Monica, at 40 E. Congress, named for Monica Flin, matriarch of the El Charro brand, who started the business in 1922.

Ray Flores, president of Flores Concepts, the umbrella company for the family’s restaurants, has a perspective that recognizes the progress and the excitement downtown, but also encourages more strategic thinking, planning and collaboration.

Some of that is happening now, Flores said.

“If that continues, and (Rio Nuevo) continues to seek input from existing stakeholders, I think that’s good,” Flores said.

“It’s hard for me not to look at it from a 100-year-old lens,” he said. “I’m really happy with the big work that Rio Nuevo did. Now, I feel like it needs to be a little more surgical. We got the cancer out so how do we sew this back up so that we have a long life.”

Another who brought life to the downtown restaurant business, developer Scott Stiteler, opened two establishments side-by-side, Hub Restaurant & Ice Creamery and Playground Bar & Lounge. Both sit across the alley from the AC Hotel Tucson Downtown, which Stiteler also built and operates.

Stiteler and new partner Regan Jasper recently added Corbett’s, a bar and grill featuring pickleball courts at 340 N. Sixth Ave. and inside the Rio Nuevo District, to the portfolio.

As with the Fentons, Hub and Playground were a roll of the dice for Stiteler, in that they were established well before the pivotal streetcar began operating in 2014, and the landmark AC Hotel opened in 2017.

Launched in 2009, the Hub and Playground were nonetheless instrumental in establishing what many call a “vibe” downtown with the type of restaurants and bars that hadn’t been seen in the area, maybe ever.

“We didn’t just come in and put fancy light bulbs and paint the wall a new color, put new upholstery on old chairs and open with a good menu,” Stiteler said. “We got a 100-year-old space and started over. It felt warm and comfortable and inviting. It just felt right. We caught lightning in a bottle.”

The lightning has now extended to Corbett’s on Sixth Avenue – literally on the other side of the tracks. Corbett’s sits in a 90-year-old building that was a lumber yard before Jasper and Stiteler made it one of the hippest joints downtown with pickleball courts, banks of televisions and bar-and-grill fare.

Stiteler and Jasper are now renovating Hub and Playground as a space to attract business from the AC Marriott and to continue to add to the vibe.

Even with all the residential properties and other developments that have sprung up downtown, the restaurants doing business there still need people coming in from outside downtown and more investment to sustain them, Jasper said.

“There’s not enough critical mass down here with residential to make it so that the people that are living downtown are filling the restaurants,” he said. “There needs to be a reason to come down. It’s either a show, some activities going on at Tucson Convention Center, the Gem Show.

“What helps is the AC Marriott. What helps is a new hotel getting built that physically brings more outsiders down here. But to me, it’s still a destination, so you’ve got to make the destination piece of it work.”