restaurant design BY JOE PAZDAN, AIA Managing Principal, McMillan Pazdan Smith Invitation to GATHER Open-air restaurant and music venue thrives through COVID-19. T he restaurant business is notoriously fi ckle, but the CO-VID-19 pandemic dealt death-blows to thousands of es-tablishments across the country as they struggled to stay afl oat through mandated closures, capacity limits and an overall downturn in patronage. So how did Gather GVL, a live music venue with a court-yard gathering spot bounded by restaurants in repurposed ship-ping containers, not only survive opening for business during the early days of the pandemic, but continue to thrive during such a tumultuous time for restaura-teurs? The story of Gather GVL is one of collaboration, inspiration, teamwork and perseverance. HOW THE PROJECT CAME TOGETHER Doug and Mark Cross of Four Oaks Property Group had a vision of a refreshing, family-oriented space that would re-inforce the sense of community in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, and engaged my fi rm to design the project. Since the most successful examples of community-based, food-inspired gathering spots are concentrated in Southern California, we went there to fi nd inspiration and ideas to in-The performance and gathering areas are bounded by shipping container restaurants that provide multiple levels of seating. corporate into our design. While a gathering space in Greenville would certainly have a differ-ent character than one in Long Beach, we found the common factor was a focus on family and friends with a variety of foods, furnishings and entertainment. During those travels, we got to know a few restaurant own-ers from these gathering spaces to understand their needs in a specifi c way. We realized the success of Gather GVL would depend heavily on a diverse group of entrepreneurs thriving together. As designers, we worked with the property owners to establish a strong relationship with the City of Greenville’s Design Re-view Board to ensure the project fi t within the downtown master plan and was compliant with lo-cal design guidelines. GATHER GVL’S DESIGN AND CHARACTER The venue offers up a variety of seating areas on multiple levels throughout the courtyard. 14 RETAIL & RESTAURANT FACILITY BUSINESS MAY 2021 To understand what would create usable and attractive of-ferings to local restaurateurs, we prepared an early series of accurate design sketches we call “feelers” for leasing and setting up functional services. In doing so, the amenity programs for the performance space and ca-sual seating came about, as well as the open-air concept. These early sketches were in-strumental to the overall under-standing of the design concepts of the spaces and the operation of the food court as a collabora-tive group of individual restau-rants. Most importantly, they helped us identify the site’s con-straints, service functions and the balance between leasable area and amenity space. www.RetailRestaurantFB.com
Retail & Restaurant Facility Business May 2021: Page 14
