Progress

New business in W-B

August 6, 2008

Attractions set to open on S. Main

Bourbon Street Saloon, new Rodano’s will be draw for those coming downtown.

By Ron Bartizek rbartizek@timesleader.com
Business & Consumer / City Editor

WILKES-BARRE – Downtown shoppers and anyone looking for food and entertainment options soon will have new choices, one of them starting tonight when the Bourbon Street Saloon opens on South Main Street, across from Barnes & Noble.

“We’re all set and ready to go,” said Ron Kamionka, who has operated the adjacent Hardware Bar since spring. He had hoped to open Bourbon Street last month, but encountered delays in extending the liquor license. The two bars have separate entrances but are connected internally. Bourbon Street will be open 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., seven days a week.

Within a few weeks, the new Rodano’s should make its debut less than a block away at 39 Public Square, said kitchen manager Kelly Hughes. She said the restaurant will seat 150 for dinner and a private party room that accommodates 70 should open in early September. Rodano’s is moving from North Main Street, where it operated since 1989. Kinship Square and Radnor Property Group purchased that property for $600,000, to include it in a privately owned student housing and retail center across the street from the King’s College Scandlon Gymnasium.

The new restaurant will be twice as big as the old one and Hughes said it will open with “a totally updated menu” that will add salads and other choices to Rodano’s traditional pizza, stromboli and calzones.

Sandwiched in between, work has begun on a Dunkin’ Donuts expected to open in October in the same building as Bourbon Street.

Kamionka, who operates bars and restaurants in other cities, said having more destinations will attract more business to each of them. “The more the better,” he said.

All three businesses will benefit from two other nearby developments. On Sept. 1, the state Department of Labor & Industry will move 25 employees into 8,080 square feet of office space on the first floor of the Wilkes-Barre Center building. Some of the employees are coming from an office in Pittston after the building was sold to the Pittston Redevelopment Authority; the others are being consolidated from offices in Nanticoke and Tannersville.

Also, construction has begun on a pedestrian walkway that will connect the intermodal transportation center and parking garage being built on South Washington Street to South Main Street. In addition to directing bus riders to the city’s main shopping district – “at the front door of Boscov’s,” said Rob Finlay, president of Humford Equities, which owns all the real estate occupied by the new businesses – the connection will make it easy for the 229 Labor & Industry employees who work at 47 S. Washington St. to get to stores and eating places.

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