Springfield restaurateur Paul Sundy is bringing Big Whiskey’s American Bar & Grill to The Galleria shopping center, filling the iconic shoes of longtime Italian-themed J. Parrino’s Pasta House Bar and Grill, which closed in June.
Sundy has big plans for the spot at 1550 E. Battlefield Road, including taking over the adjacent DFG Insurance Co., which is expected to move to another site in the Galleria. He said cost estimates on tearing down the wall between the sites are not complete.
Construction on the fourth Big Whiskey’s location will begin June 1, and Sundy said he hopes to have the restaurant open by the first of September. Big Whiskey’s currently has two locations in Springfield at East Park Central Square and on West Republic Road, and one in Little Rock, Ark.
Sundy said consumers’ connection to J. Parrino’s, which first opened in The Galleria in 1983, might help draw customers. “If it’s a location-finder for where we’re at, then it’s great,” he said. “For us, we are hopefully making our own name for that location now.”
Sundy signed a 10-year lease with three five-year options; he declined to disclose the lease rate.
Deb Scott, commercial real estate agent with Wilhoit Properties, said the complex deal took about five months to put together. She said there had been a total of four interested parties at one time.
“We found that the terms that were most agreeable to both parties were Mr. Sundy’s, and I think it worked out very well,” Scott said.
She said the key to the deal was finding a new site for DFG Insurance that kept intact the agency’s visibility.
“That’s what allowed us to get the frontage for that restaurant space,” Scott said.
Sundy started his entrepreneurial career in 2003 with Icon Nightclub in downtown Springfield. Big Whiskey’s American Bar & Grill followed in 2006 before Sundy focused his efforts in south Springfield with the 2007 opening of the Parlor 88 Lounge on East Republic Road. In 2008, he opened Fedora Social House & The Opus Club in downtown Springfield and another Big Whiskey’s location in Little Rock, Ark.
And he’s not done.
He said on April 14 that he had reached a lease agreement with Morelock-Ross Properties to open an Irish pub in the Wilson’s Creek shopping center at 2767 W. Republic Road, west of Scenic Avenue. He said the 2,700-square-foot site should be open in about 60 days.
“I have a lot of different concepts, and this is just another one,” Sundy said, adding that the Irish pub idea was brewing for seven years.[[In-content Ad]]
A Springfield couple launched 24-hour fitness center Iron Knights Strafford; Springfield-based Meridian Title Co. LLC made its debut in Mount Vernon; and a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in conjunction with the grand opening of Render Flooring LLC.
