'Broadway' comes to San Diego as new megaplex concept is poised for 5-city rollout

Nation's Restaurant News, April 3, 2000 by Amy Spector

SAN DIEGO - Restaurateur-entrepreneur Michael Viscuso aims to tap a flood of downtown investment here by launching On Broadway Event Center, a 35,000-square-foot foodservice complex whose on-site catering arm will boast a big-name cadre of local chefs and restaurants.

Slated to open this summer, the San Diego prototype is the first of five such large-scale foodservice complexes that are planned by Viscuso and would combine a weekend-only restaurant, sushi bar and club with a full-time banquet and meeting facility. Other locations targeted are Long Beach, Calif.; Austin, Texas; Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Seattle.

"I'm looking for up-and-coming metropolitan cities" with sites near convention centers, Viscuso said. "I'm going after local business primarily on the weekends," he added, explaining that weekdays would be earmarked for convention-related catering events.

According to Derek Danziger, communications manager for San Diego's Centre City Development Corp., On Broadway is part of more than $3 billion in commercial and residential investment being pumped into downtown San Diego over a five-year period that began in 1999. The private investment binge will ratchet up downtown's share of housing to 20 percent of the county's total and bring a new San Diego Padres baseball park to the city center.

In addition, public funding to the tune of $900 million will double the size of the downtown San Diego Convention Center, sources there said.

Viscuso joins several other restaurateurs with new ventures in or near the downtown area. Among them are Minneapolisbased Buca di Beppo's first San Diego location, scheduled to open in April, and Long Beach-based King Seafood Co.'s new Royale concept, a French brasserie slated for a summer debut in downtown's bustling Gaslamp District. There's also a 3-month-old restaurant, catering site and cooking school called The Prado, operated in Balboa Park by the locally based Cohn Restaurant Group.

Viscuso's novel approach to his kitchen staff is among the things that separate On Broadway Event Center from other high-energy hybrid restaurant-and-catering concepts in San Diego and elsewhere.

The veteran Southern California operator, whose other restaurants are E Street Alley and The Grape, both in San Diego, and J.J.'s Steakhouse, in Pasadena, has assembled a portfolio of award-winning chefs and caterers with whom On Broadway will contract for events. Viscuso's own kitchen staff will be a skeleton crew employed mostly for dinner service on Friday and Saturday nights, when On Broadway's restaurant will open to the public.

Viscuso said several noted San Diego establishments have signed on to provide culinary services for On Broadway so far, including the Persian-cuisine restaurant Bandar, Trattoria Portobello, Osteria Panevino and Greystone's Steakhouse. "We are not competing with local chefs," he said. "We've got the top 10 catering companies and the top eight or nine chefs in San Diego contracted," he said.

On Broadway will occupy two floors of a 14-story former bank building whose owners gave it a $35 million face-lift only a few years ago, Viscuso said. He negotiated a 25-cent-per-square-foot lease for the basement and a $1per-square-foot lease for the ground floor, where he will operate the public-access restaurant and club on Fridays and Saturdays. On Broadway otherwise will function as a banquet and meeting center for local businesses and event planners, Viscuso said.

Viscuso plans to handle the more lucrative alcohol and entertainment sales himself and tack a 10- to 15-percent fee onto food sales, he said. He will lease the facility as well as banquet equipment, linens and tableware to restaurants that need larger, offsite party space. He also has subleased space on-premises to a florist and an art gallery that can service banquet clients, he said. "That adds another 8 percent to the bottom line," he said.

"We'll run a 28- to 30-percent margin on this concept," Viscuso predicted. Additional revenues will accrue from cover charges at the club, which is projected to score at least $1 million in sales annually at the new site.

Viscuso and his family have managed restaurants in Southern California for six years, beginning with E Street Alley, in the Gaslamp District. The family then added J.J.'s Steakhouse in Pasadena and the small wine store and restaurant, The Grape, in San Diego. The three businesses generate approximately $7 million in sales annually, he said.

He projects first-year sales at On Broadway to add another $6 million to that total.

For the new project the building's first-floor lobby will be converted to banquet space, Viscuso said. The bank's former loan department will be turned into the 5,000-square-foot banquet kitchen. That same level will also house the 40-seat restaurant and the 10-seat sushi and raw bar, to be called Zen On Broadway, he said.

The bank vaults downstairs will become a billiards area, flanked by two video-wired bars that can be used for multi-media presentations during the week. Hatch Design Group of Costa Mesa, Calif., has created a 1950s-style decor for the interior, he said, that will include several theatrical details, such as a 35-foot, back-lit ruby-glass bar on the first floor and dramatic floor-to-ceiling booths in the downstairs "Ultra Bar."