Lexington, KY - Something new and totally different is in the works for 431 Old Vine Street, a site that has seen five restaurant and catering incarnations come and go since the former auto body shop was sold to Lexington caterer Phil Dunn back in the '90s.
Today, the 6,200-square-foot brick building is undergoing extensive and expensive renovations from top to bottom, end to end - and then some.
"Our intent is to become a real neighborhood pizza pub and bar," said a busy Evan Trommer, restaurateur, as he offered a tour amid the clatter and dust of interior construction.
Underway now is a thorough revamping of plumbing and electrical wiring throughout the circa-1930s building. A reconfigured kitchen will see the installation of a new grill, new friers and an assortment of Energy Star-rated cooking equipment.
One enclosed space adjacent to the dining area will accommodate a game room and a mercifully enclosed area where kids can enjoy birthday parties and such in true kid fashion. Another separate area behind the kitchen and featuring audio/visual equipment will host meetings for up to 20 people. Restrooms also are being enlarged and added.
The concept goes for an "open air" atmosphere in warm weather, with cozy booth seating under roll-out casement windows along the outer walls of the restaurant section, and roll-up garage doors opening onto sidewalk and patio seating off the bar, located at the opposite end of the building. But when chilly weather settles over the Bluegrass, they'll be ready to bring all the action indoors.
"We're probably going to have 30 to 35 televisions in here - every game that you want to watch. We'll have the NFL package so you can come in and watch different football games. Clearly the UK games will always take precedence. Every seat in the house will have a good view of at least one TV, if not a couple," he said.
The concept that Trommer and his business partner and wife, Kathy, are now preparing is an expansion of the small, California-based Village Host franchise.
"It's a pizza place that I worked at as a teenager and in my early twenties; really worked every single job from managing it to making the sauce, making the pizza," Trommer said. "It's Village Host - plus. We're expanding the menu to tailor it to regional likes and dislikes."
As a boutique franchise, Village Host can offer franchisees more flexibility than the major chains, he explained.
"We can't go rogue on them; the core menu will stay intact. But, for instance, when you go into a Village Host in California, you have to stand in line to order pizza. We're going to have table service. The menu is going to be every recipe that they have, but because we have a full bar, we're adding appetizers."
In addition to pizza, burgers and sandwiches, a full-service, 20-foot-long salad and soup bar will stretch between the dining area and a new bar being constructed in the eastern end of the building.
"You can come into this place and eat as healthy as you want, or as bad as you want," Trommer said with a chuckle. "We'll have a burger with a little bit of a twist: it's on a sourdough roll. We prepare it a certain way that, in my opinion, is delicious. We're going to have a few pasta dishes. We're going to have a number of different sandwiches, including a pizza sandwich where we take the sourdough bread, put the sauce and cheese on it and then any three toppings that the customer wants."
A "horseshoe" bar is being constructed in the eastern third of the building, opening via those roll-up doors onto a small seating area along Old Vine Street, plus a new 40-seat patio along a side of the building now bordered by a parking lot. Space for the patio was negotiated into the lease agreement and in its first rendition, will not replace any parking.
"If we find ourselves needing more space - and we hope to have this problem - we can pour a second pad and double our patio capacity," Trommer explained.
At the helm as general manager will be the Brooklyn-born Todd Skier, a Ritz-Carlton-trained professional who was working as a lead butler when Trommer met him in Las Vegas.
"He has impeccable attention to detail," Trommer noted. Skier was recruited for the Lexington project and relocated to Lexington in February.
It's taken decades for Evan Trommer to come full circle, back not only to the restaurant business, but to the very brand that cut his first paycheck.
"I love the action of a restaurant," he said. "It's in certain people's blood. And certain people wouldn't touch it. We've always loved it. My grandfather ran a restaurant in New York City. It closed in the late '40s and the building was torn down, and that's where the World Trade Centers were built."
The Trommers had the rare option to settle their family anywhere they chose. He had done well - quite well. The San Francisco Bay Area native had built Leslee Scott, Inc. into a national business of distributing inmate clothing and sundries to jails and prisons across the country.
"After 22 years, I looked for an exit strategy because I wanted to be home more instead of on planes all the time. I was fortunate enough to sell at the right time. I actually sold the company twice - first to a big equity group, and then my biggest competitor said, 'We want you.' So, we sold it 2005 to my competitor, and my family and I moved to North Carolina to transition the business and make sure that our employees were taken care of."
Once the transition process in Raleigh was completed, the Trommers began looking around for the ideal place to raise two teenage sons.
"Being in the horse business (Trommer has 35 Thoroughbreds housed on farms across the United States), we actually came to Kentucky to look at Louisville. My wife, who is the smarter of the two, said, 'Let's go down and look at Lexington.' One of our big priorities was to find a school that our kids would be happy with and would work for them. We found Sayre and started looking around, and it didn't take long for us to realize that this was the right place."
The siren call of the restaurant business finally attracted the couple to the available space at 431 Old Vine.
The address has seen multiple concepts come and go. Originally the auto body shop of the Dixie McKinley Cadillac dealership that was located directly across the street on Old Vine (in what has since become the offices of Lynn Imaging and Smiley Pete Publishing, which owns this publication), it was sold to caterer Phil Dunn in the '90s. It was later renovated and reopened by Dunn as a bistro and lounge, and then, in succession, it became an establishment simply named "431," followed by the french bistro Le Toulouse, Annette's City Cafe and finally, the short-lived alcohol-free Bar None.
Its new inhabitants have arrived in Lexington at a time when, despite the uncertainties of the economy, the city - and its downtown area in particular - is experiencing new energy and growth.
"We love the city. We love the people. It feels like we've been here all our lives," Trommer said. "We want to involve the community with us and vice versa. We plan to reach out to a number of different organizations, such as local churches, where their parishioners can come in and get a discount, but also to let some of that money float back to the parish itself. We want to become involved with the schools as well. Whatever we need to do to make that happen, whether they come to us or we go to them or both, that's absolutely our intent."
The Trommers plan to open Village Host before the holiday season.