In a room filled with rubble, covered in graffiti and infested with pigeons, Chris Martin envisions a lively downtown Greensburg restaurant, with a wood-fired grill cooking made-to-order pizzas and a bar serving craft drinks.
If renovations go according to plan, dŌ Wood-Fired will open its second location at 39 N. Main St. next fall.
In 2015, Martin and co-owners David Caruso and John Painter opened dŌ (pronounced “dough”) in Irwin. They’ve had their sights on Greensburg ever since.
“Right away, it’s where we wanted to go,” he said.
They quickly identified the empty North Main Street building as a good location — right across from the Westmoreland County Courthouse. But the long-vacant building posed a daunting renovation challenge, and they weren’t sure they were ready to tackle it themselves, Martin said.
“Greensburg’s kind of a unique beast,” he said. “There’s a lot of regulations, a lot that needs to be done. We needed to partner up with somebody who’s doing it, and doing it really well.”
Martin is friends with Suzanne Ward, her husband Mike Ward, and Tim Zontek, who co-own the development group City Cribs.
This year, City Cribs bought a vacant building at 136 S. Pennsylvania Ave., turning it into retail space and apartments. Renovations there are almost done, and City Cribs has been eyeing other projects in the city, Suzanne Ward said. The company decided to buy the North Main Street building for $140,000 and partner with dŌ to renovate it.
“We eat at dŌ. We know the owners very well, and their family. They’re good people,” she said.
There’s a lot of work to do. The building was constructed in 1910, originally as Merchants and Farmers Bank. It most recently housed Mills Printing, but has been vacant for almost a decade.
It will take $600,000 or more to renovate, Suzanne Ward estimated.
“It’s dilapidated. The third floor, we can’t even really walk in the third floor, there are holes going down to the lower levels,” she said.
City Cribs is looking for contractors to do the work. It plans to issue a request for proposals on Friday.
The restaurant and bar will take up the first two floors. City Cribs is in talks with potential tenants for the third, Ward said.
The Greensburg location will be called the dŌ Wood-Fired Craft House, Martin said. In addition to the existing menu of pizzas and sandwiches, it will offer new entrees. Unlike the Irwin location, it will have a bar and serve alcohol, including craft liquors from Bellefonte-based Big Spring Spirits.
“Everything we do, we try to bring a unique experience for the palate,” Martin said.
