Coba Cocina is the latest development on an evolving roadway
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Standing next to his 3,000-gallon jellyfish aquarium at Coba Cocina, the new restaurant that opened on Richmond Road in March, Lee Greer recalls one of his first forays into aquatic ornamentation.Greer – the president of Greer Companies, a local hospitality and real estate development company whose portfolio includes, along with Coba Cocina, 35 Cheddar’s restaurants in Kentucky and several contiguous states – was opening one of his first Cheddar’s restaurants, in Johnson City, Tenn. Aquariums, usually behind the bar, are popular features in most Cheddar’s restaurants, but this one, for some reason, had a hairline fracture in the glass, which decided to give way and spill forth its contents – 15 minutes before opening.“That was almost the beginning of the end of the fish tank experiment,” Greer said with a chuckle.
Obviously undeterred, this new aquarium is the piece de resistance of Coba Cocina, which Greer opened in the Idle Hour Shopping Center with his father, Phil, the founder of Greer Companies. Extending nearly 20 feet into the air, the tank is visible from nearly every nook and cranny in the 12,000-square-foot restaurant. Greer says it’s the largest private jellyfish aquarium in the world, and is home to hundreds of moon jellies.
Aquarium aside, from the food to the architecture to the unique concept, Coba Cocina is certainly a distinct Lexington restaurant.
The restaurant is actually three separate, but complementary, concepts: Cocoh! Confectioner, a bakery, cafe and gelateria; Cobar Cantina, an upstairs lounge with a specific small pate (tapas) menu; and Coba Cocina, the intricately decorated downstairs restaurant with seating for nearly 230 people (the entire building can sit upwards of 400).
The cuisine, managed by chef Alejandro Velasquez, is “pan-American,” according to Greer, and is inspired by dishes from Mexico, South America and Latin America, the Baja, and Texas. Coba menu specialities include ceviche, brisket tacos, a Cubano sandwich, agave-BBQ glazed ribs, chicken monterey and “pescado de Yucatan.” Coba offers lunch and dinner, as well as a variety of breakfast items in Cocoh!, which is managed by Velasquez’s wife, Shanyn – a seasoned pâtissière.
The restaurant is named after the city of Coba, on the eastern Gulf Coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, which is a well-known destination because of its Mayan ruins. Its interior was inspired by “cenotes” – sea caves characteristic of Yucatan which were important sources of water and other aspects of the Mayan civilization.
The moon jellies and many other features feed into this nautical and cenote-cave theme, from the 38-foot-wide dome perched on top of the building, to the sparkling blue ceiling panels and the wavy, scale-like, “fish panel” walls. Other pieces and installations play into the Mayan theme, with a row of panels of “glyphs” lining the exterior and ornate, hand-hammered front door pulls at the front entrance.
Dozens of local and central Kentucky craftspeople and professionals contributed to specific components of the building’s full rendering, such as Mike Angelucci, whose company, Angelucci Acoustical, constructed the the restaurant’s large domes, and Bryan Uittenbogaard from Garrard Wood Products, who fashioned the interior’s distinctive walls. Greer said he is excited finally to be able to show off all the work that went into the building, which was designed by architect Todd Ott.
“When this thing was under construction, it was a hodgepodge of all kinds of crazy stuff,” Greer said. “You had a bunch of people thinking we’d just dumped a bunch of leftover building material on to a job site and started throw
ing it together. But now, with the outside really coming together and done, you can get a full appreciation. It is an amazing work of art by the architects and all the craftspeople we had working on it.”
Greer wouldn’t provide the exact amount invested for the multi-million-dollar restaurant, which he said will employ about 200 people, but he did acknowledge that opening more Coba Cocina locations (or perhaps one of the three different concepts) could be a possibility after gauging the success of the initial restaurant’s performance, from the food to the service to the design.
“Frankly, this one could never make money; there’s just too much in it,” Greer said. “This is for Lexington, and we want to get it right. … If you’re ever looking for a return on investment, you’ll never get it in just one. It’ll take several of these.”
Richmond Road Sea Change
Annette Castle is the president of the Idle Hour Neighbors Alliance, an organization which represents the community just north of Richmond Road behind the Idle Hour Shopping Center. She and her husband, Derriel, have lived on St. Ann Drive for 45 years, and during that time they’ve watched the ebb and flow of development along the stretch of Richmond Road between Idle Hour Country Club and New Circle Road, but Castle says nothing really compares to the sea change currently taking place along that busy thoroughfare.
“It’s been fun to watch things change,” she said.
Along with the installation of Coba Cocina, at the corner of Richmond Road and St. Margaret Drive, which dramatically altered the look and feel of one of the main entrances into her neighborhood, Castle has witnessed the highly anticipated and discussed multi-million-dollar metamorphosis of the former Lexington Mall into the newest campus for Southland Christian Church not too far from her home.
“I think anything that’s adjacent to us that improves the look of the area is always good for us,” she said.
While the conspicuous design for each of these structures is unorthodox, Castle says the two properties are interesting buildings and bookends to her neighborhood, especially Coba Cocina, which has some unintended roadside benefits.
“It’s a great way to direct somebody to your home,” she said.
Last year, Castle also saw 90 tons of honeysuckle removed from the creek bed which runs parallel to Richmond Road along its south side as part of a $20,000 initiative through the Lowe’s / Keep America Beautiful Community Improvement Grant, which greatly improved the roadside visibility for two apartment complexes behind the plants.
These two complexes, Kenwick Place and Canterbury Place, were purchased by Resource Real Estate in March for $6.8 million. The national real estate firm, which specializes in acquiring apartments that are being underutilized, according to executive vice president Kevin Finkel, plans to renovate the 244 units associated with the two properties.
Finkel said his company will make an initial $3-million investment to improve the two properties, which is almost $12,500 per unit, and that the new activity along Richmond Road was one of the factors they considered when purchasing the properties.
“This particular part of Lexington was appealing to us because it is becoming more vital, we see that there’s a lot of activity,” Finkel said. “This particular property benefits from excellent visibility on Richmond Road, which has just under 30,000 vehicles passing by every day. As Richmond Road gets more active because of all this development going on, that’s only going to become more important to our property, as visibility is really critical in terms of marketing an apartment community.”
Bill Farmer, Jr. the Fifth District Councilmember who represents this section of Richmond Road, says this groundswell of activity – organic, and not orchestrated under one entity – is in response to the commercial shift from Richmond Road to the Hamburg area.
“Richmond Road kind of got mined out as everything moved to Hamburg,” he said. “This is kind of a different sort of infill than we’ve seen before, it’s infill in terms of businesses and organizations rather than housing.”
Farmer says, given this section of Richmond Road’s proximity to downtown and other amenities, it was only a matter of time before the area started to attract attention.
“What Richmond Road had when Henry Clay built that home for his son out there, that’s still hidden from the trees, is what it still has now: location,” Farmer said, referring to Mansfield (the Thomas Hart Clay House), at the corner of Richmond Road and Shriners Lane.
In regards to design, Farmer said that these additions to Richmond Road, Coba Cocina and Southland Christian Church, have “new and dynamic architecture” – the presence of which is becoming more prevalent in Lexington.
“Since one of Lexington’s central planning tenets is infill and redevelopment, the city becomes denser, but the farmland remains green and pastoral,” he said. “If we’re going to make Lexington a little denser, let’s make it look a little better.”
As for Castle with the Idle Hour Neighbors Alliance, she’s planning on orchestrating a few changes to make her neighborhood look a little better too. The neighborhood association has plans to install a native plant garden in the traffic island on St. Ann Drive between Fazoli’s and Walgreens, as well as a community garden in Idle Hour Park.