The Fifth Floor features both formal and casual dining areas

By BRANDON KLEIN

bklein@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

George Guarnieri made a list of 250 names for his new downtown restaurant, but only one stood out.

"The Fifth Floor still looked the best," he said.

The name also denotes where the restaurant is located inside the Commerce Building, 201 E. Commerce St., downtown, where the former Youngstown Club was located.

The restaurant will be open to the public Thursday after renovations began in October.

The Fifth Floor features both formal and casual dining areas with a tapas wine bar in the middle. The dining areas can accommodate 150 people, and an additional 100 people in its two banquet rooms, Guarnieri said.

Aside from the decor, Jay Whittenberger, The Fifth Floor's chef and restaurant consultant, said meal costs will range from $8 to $30.

The dinner menu will be organized in different categories: sky for poultry, land for meats, sea for seafood, garden and earth for vegetables.

The tapas wine bar's menu will have an array of meats, olives, peppers and cheeses to complement the wine. For casual dining, customers can enjoy comfort food such as sandwiches.

"We want everyone to feel comfortable," he said.

The Fifth Floor also will have 16 beers on tap and 24 wines. Whittenberger said they are working with a brewery in Slippery Rock, Pa., to create "The Fifth Floor" craft beer.

"No one in this area has that," he said.

Weekly specials, which start in May, include Tapas Tuesdays that offer $10 bottles of wine, and Free Sushi Fridays, which will offer $5 martinis.

The specials will be offered during happy hour from 4 to 6:30 p.m., Whittenberger said.

Additionally, the restaurant will have beer-and-wine tasting events each month. Beer tastings, or Tap Takeovers, will take place on the first Tuesday of the month, and wine tastings will take place on the third Thursday of the month, he said.

The first beer-tasting April 7 will have customers receiving masks and souvenirs while tasting Oculto, a tequila-flavor beer, Whittenberger said.

"It will be [the first] masquerade beer tasting," he said, adding that the cost for tasting events will range from $25 to $50.

The Fifth Floor's initial hours will be from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays, Guarnieri said.

Some people already have enjoyed the new restaurant. The Fifth Floor hosted a private fundraising event for Danny Thomas, who is running for mayor in Struthers.

"I always liked the Youngstown Club," he said.

But Thomas said the new restaurant has a different ambience from its club days. "Everything sparkles now," he said.

The space has been vacant for two years since the Youngstown Club closed in 2012, said Richard Mills, president of Ohio One Corp., which owns the Commerce Building.

"It's another dining option in downtown that is needed," Mills said.

Mills said that city clubs have outlived their life, and that the Youngstown Club was among the last in the country.

The club operated for 110 years, and played host to politicians, businessman and the elite, according to Vindicator files. At its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, the club boasted a membership of 1,100. The club went through three other buildings before settling on the fifth, and half of the fourth floors of the Commerce Building in 1989, which was once a Haber's Furniture Store.

"It really is such a beautiful place," said Katie Dodd, the Youngstown Club's last general manager, who was on staff from 2007 to 2012.

The club's membership declined to about 220 in its final year and couldn't sustain its day-to-day operations, she said.

"It was really emotional," Dodd said.

Last year, Guarnieri, who had sold the Belleria Pizzeria on Youngstown-Poland Road in Struthers, purchased the liquor license from Ohio One Corp. and leased the former club space.

He said the restaurant will be completely open to the public. The chef, Whittenberger, agreed.

"Clubs are dead; Fifth Floor lives," he said.