It isn't.

Food Truck and Beer Garden Restaurant moving into Stoudemire's
 

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/b...er-garden.html

Good win! Hope it can survive. Quite the competition now downtown for Live Music venues.

Speaking of restaurants, someone here said that Forno pizza was closing and someone else told me it closed but it definitely looks open right now. Wasn't a ramen shop supposed to open in front of those very expensive townhomes on 2nd and Roosevelt?

I believe the ramen-noodle shop was supposed to open in the former Centurion/Bar Maximums space in Roosevelt Square. Nothing seems to have come of that however.:shrug:

SoSoBa still has downtown PHX listed as a location their website. Last mention of it on their Facebook page was early January and said they would be here soon. It also mentioned they are doing some catering in April in PHX so hopefully they are still moving forward

What I've heard is that Forno may be forced to close or relocate if the building is sold to make way for a new apartment building. Aside from here, the only other source I have is a blog notorious for exaggerating the negative about Phoenix, so I don't know if the news has been magnified through a pessimistic lens. In any case, there will be ground floor restaurant space in Union and other nearby buildings now under construction, so I hope a relocation, rather than a permanent closure, is possible.

Do you have a link to that blog? Any other details on the proposed building and how much of the lot south it's going to take up?

I work in Collier Center and noticed a lot of activity there and was wondering what they were doing there. I hope it does well, but with Suns attendance pretty bad that part of downtown doesn't get a lot of activity we will see if the Diamond backs bring.

No details at all. The only mention I've seen is this brief one:

"Another troubling sign is that the delightful Forno 301 Italian restaurant is apparently being pushed out; the owner of the building is said to want to tear it down and build apartments."

Notice the words "apparently" and "said to." In other words, this sounds uncertain in terms of timing.

The quote comes from the Rogue Columnist blog, which I don't recommend reading regularly unless you can endure a lot of bitter nostalgia from a Phoenician in exile. I happened upon it while doing a search for news on Roosevelt Row.

http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_...ked-again.html

Seems made up to me, I've heard nothing about it and I know that building well.

Also lots of people "want to" build apartments.

Yea. I gave up on Rogue Columnist a while back. Lots of mis-information and longing for a Phoenix 30 years ago from a guy that has lived in Seattle for nearly as long. Pretty much basis everything on hearsay and media reports without actually seeing what is really being done in Phoenix. Not a good way to blog IMHO.

Anyway. Just read that Chick-fil-A will be opening a new location soon at the Dowtown ASU campus.

I decided to go to the source. I had lunch at Forno 301 today and talked to my server, who happens to be one of the three partners in the restaurant. English is not her first language, so our conversation didn't go into depth, but here's what I was able to discern:

-- The building was recently sold.
-- There hasn't been much communication from the new owner to tenants.
-- They think the new owner may decide to demolish the building to make way for a multistory building.
-- If that happens, Forno 301 may try to relocate. She mentioned some of the new restaurant space in new buildings under construction.

At this point, it's premature to say that the restaurant is closing -- only that its future is uncertain.

Clearly that isn't one of the best buildings on Roosevelt, but it's a nice little building with slightly set back street fronting retail and restaurants. I fear this owner will demolish and nothing will ever happen, ruining the continuity of the best stretch of historic neighborhood/commercial in the city.

I agree that would be the worst possible outcome, but I don't see that happening the way it did circa 2007. The predictably negative blog post cherry picked a few projects that seem to be moving slowly (but most of them are still moving) and ignored an equal number that are moving fast (e.g. Portland on the Park, en Hance Park, Proxy 333, Linear, Illuminate).

So the building was sold and they are speculating that the sky is falling.

I didn't even read the blog (until now) The Rogue Columnist is a kook in is own right. Mostly just a bitter old dude that writes the exact same muck about Phoenix all the time.

In this recent column not only is he cherry-picking the projects that are moving slowly (and disregarding all the fast-movers and ones under construction), he's completely ignoring that many of the positives of other cities that he lists actually are totally happening in DT Phoenix as well. He menitons tech branch offices and growing start ups... apparently he's never heard of Uber, WebPT, and everything happening in the Heard Building and Luhrs Tower. And that's just what I thought of off the top of my head in two seconds.

State could create tax district for new Coyotes arena near ASU or in Mesa or Phoenix
 

Not sure where to really put this post since talks about Tempe and Mesa now too. Looks like now they're trying to lobby for special legislation to help pay for the arena.

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/n...w-coyotes.html

Any of those locations would be better than where it currently is located.

The Biz Journal recently reported that the organization is ready to make an announcement on the site selection in early April. I am not sure if the legislative proposal would cause a delay in the announcement or not. I am hearing they are leaning towards ASU/ Tempe...but had no idea Mesa Riverview was in the mix!

Putting it in Mesa only shows they learned nothing from being in Glendale.