Longtime Tucson restaurateur Daniel Scordato will not be opening a restaurant in the iconic Indian Village Trading Post downtown as part of developer Zach Fenton’s planned restaurant-bar-event center project.
But Fenton said the $5.5 million project will move forward.
“We are obviously going to be on the hunt for new tenants,” he said.
Fenton said he and his partners, including Brenndon Scott, are still drawing up design plans and will begin the permitting process to renovate the three-story, 10,000-square-foot building at 72 E. Congress St. He estimated it would take a year before the project is finished.
Scordato, who had been working with Fenton and Scott since they began discussing the project early this year, pulled out late last week after Fenton sent him preliminary design plans.
“I just got cold feet,” Scordato, chef-owner of the 30-plus-year-old Vivace and his 2-year-old fast-casual Uptown Burger in the foothills, said on Tuesday.
Scordato said he flirted with the idea of opening a restaurant downtown, but “I realized that I’m 65 and I just can’t do that. I’ve got Vivace and now the burger place and I need to concentrate on that.”
Fenton on Tuesday said he was “not thrilled” that Scordato pulled out, but he understood his decision.
“They say time kills deals and I think in this case, several months went by from when we sat down with Danny and talked about it and getting the deal to the finish line,” he said.
The Indian Village Trading Post project wasn’t a done deal until late July when Rio Nuevo agreed to sell Fenton the building for $1 million and invest another $1 million in the renovations. The Rio Nuevo board, which also pledged $500,000 for tenant improvements for the restaurant, had given initial approval to the project when it was first pitched at the board’s March meeting.
At that meeting, Rio Nuevo Chairman Fletcher McCusker said Fenton’s plan was the deciding factor to award the project, “but to be able to bring Danny Scordato downtown was a key factor for us.”
McCusker on Tuesday said “the Scordato piece was nice and exciting,” but “it was never a condition of the deal. The condition of the deal was economic and (Fenton) fulfilled those.”
The Indian Village Trading Post, built in 1897 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, has been vacant since its last tenant, the Indian Village Trading Post, left in 2007, three years after Rio Nuevo sold the building to developer Bourn Partners for $100 in 2004. The building was part of the Rio Nuevo downtown redevelopment.
Bourn’s plans for the space over the years included retail, condo and hotel components, but none ever came to fruition largely because of the faltering economy, according to published reports.
Under the deal to sell the building to Fenton, Rio Nuevo bought it back from Bourne for $1.5 million, sold it to Fenton for $1 million and ate the $500,000 loss, McCusker said.
Under the deal to sell the building to Fenton, Rio Nuevo bought it back from Bourne for $1.5 million, sold it to Fenton for $1 million and ate the $500,000 loss, McCusker said.
Fenton said restaurant operators interested in the project can reach out to him through his company, ZFI Holdings (zfiholdings.com).
Joe Pagac works on a mural on the outside of the YMCA of Tucson building on August 28, 2023. Pagac says the 2,600 square-foot mural will be finished by this weekend. The mural highlights different aspects of what the YMCA offers such as basketball, swimming and horseback riding. The mural is funded by the Connie Hillman Family Foundation. Video by: Mamta Popat, Arizona Daily Star
