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Fifth Floor has one last hurrah
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
On the last night his restaurant was open, George Guarnieri greeted his guests with hugs instead of menus.
Tears were seen, instead of laughs heard, as Guarnieri embraced those who came for a last hurrah Wednesday at The Fifth Floor inside downtown Youngstown’s Commerce Building.
“This is home,” said Sue Greaves, a customer from McDonald.
Greaves came to the last hurrah with her friend, Donna Santisi of Canfield. Both were frequent customers at the classy/casual restaurant that made them feel right at home with its ambience and the kindness of the cook and his workers.
“We were very upset it was closing,” Greaves said. “You couldn’t find a better place to be. I am so sad tonight.”
“It’s just so sad that it’s the last day,” Santisi added.
Guarnieri announced two weeks ago that he had to close the restaurant because it wasn’t busy enough to stay open.
“We knew things were getting bad,” Guarnieri said. “We would catch up and then it got worse.”
Now, Guarnieri feels as if he has let Youngstown down by shutting the doors of The Fifth Floor, but he knows he had no choice.
He opened the restaurant, the previous location for the Youngstown Club, in April 2015. The former owner of the Belleria in Struthers for 19 years sold that business to move on to a smaller operation.
“It had gotten harder,” Guarnieri said. “We had gotten busier and busier there.”
Guarnieri wanted to slow down. He looked for available liquor licenses and found The Fifth Floor.
“I got sucked in,” Guarnieri said.
He took one look at the view from the fifth floor of the Commerce Building overlooking his native city and decided to take a risk and start a restaurant that would be an even bigger operation than Belleria. He took to revamping the inside and investing more than $500,000 to upgrade the kitchen, add bars and make other changes.
He wanted the atmosphere to be classy, but not too classy. He didn’t want people to think they had to dress up to come to The Fifth Floor.
“In the beginning, it was busy,” Guarnieri said.
But the crowds died down – except on nights when the Covelli Centre pulled in a crowd for concerts and shows.
The food costs were running 60 percent and labor costs also were running 60 percent.
“I was always in the hole,” Guarnieri said.
About eight months into the business, Guarnieri knew the restaurant was in trouble. He started to think of other ways to bring in the crowds.
“We never got to that part,” he said. “In all honesty, I could have done things different, but I don’t think it would have” made a difference.
Guarnieri realizes now that most people don’t get fancy when they go out to eat – they just jump in the car and go.
“Somehow, I forgot to factor that in,” he said.
Now that his restaurant is closed, Guarnieri is going to take some time off and take a vacation with his wife, Patty.
“We have given two years of our lives to this place,” Patty said. “We tried really hard. The people have told me how much they are gonna miss us down here.”