Mexican restaurant to open in downtown Youngstown early next year

By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

A Mexican restaurant is expected to open by February at the former Commonwealth Land Title Agency of Youngstown Inc. building on North Phelps Street.

Rodney Freel, one of the owners of the downtown restaurant to be called Gringos Tacos and Tequila, said they are investing about $200,000 in the building at 20 and 24 N. Phelps St.

“We’ve been looking at that building for a year and a half,” Freel said. “We think the downtown is growing, and we want to be part of it.”

That street – between West Commerce and West Federal streets, and where Gringos will be located – will be closed to vehicular traffic by late spring 2020.

City officials have talked for years about a pedestrian mall along that section of North Phelps Street and decided in February to do it.

A sewer project there will start after Christmas and the streetscape work will be done in the late spring, said Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy director of public works.

The closure of the street to vehicular traffic “will be a great advantage,” Freel said. “It will bring people to that area.”

Freel’s partners are Ken Vigorito and Jorge Carreno. The latter owns Margherita’s Grille, a restaurant in Girard.

The city’s planning commission voted Tuesday to recommend to city council to allow the restaurant to open. Gringos needs permission because it will sell alcohol and is considered a regulated use. Under city law, a regulated-use business cannot open within 500 feet of another regulated-use business without council approval. Gringos is near nine other places that serve alcohol and a tattoo parlor, all of which are considered regulated-use businesses.

The restaurant also needs approval from the city’s design review committee to renovate the first floor, remove the Commonwealth canopy, make changes to the entrance and install an exterior sign. The committee is meeting Sept. 3.

Also at the Sept. 3 meeting, the committee will consider a request from Earl Winner, the owner of Tavern 208 Bar and Grill, who wants to open as early as next month at the former St. Vincent DePaul Society dining hall and an adjoining closed cigar store, across the street from the new amphitheater and park.

Winner is spending about $300,000 to $400,000 to remodel the buildings at 200 and 208 Front St.

He needs the committee’s approval to remove one main door and install another, put in four overhead glass doors and add more stones to the exterior.