“Behind the clock,” business owner Leonidas “Louis” Vlahopoulus says when giving directions to his Galaxy Restaurant on Getty Square in downtown Yonkers.
The sidewalk clock is a landmark standing at the lively heart of the city”™s historic business center. After a quarter-century in his family”™s corner diner at 1 Palisade Ave., the 58-year-old Greek immigrant is an enduring fixture there too.
“It”™s hard for people to miss me,” Vlahopoulus said last week in his well-kept two-room restaurant, where the stools and booths are blue leather, the tables and counter red, the walls lined with framed photos of visiting stars (Denzel Washington, Sylvester Stallone) and sparkling mirrors and a minor galaxy of patterned stars illumines ceiling tiles. “After 25 years, you get to know everybody. You get the respect if you give the respect. You get it right back.”
Getty Square stands at the edge of major change these days. To Vlahopoulus and other business owners there, the future in an economically revitalized downtown is uncertain. The restaurateur plans to have a part in and prosper from a progress that he said “is hard to stop.” His plans could end his tenure as an endearing presence at the very heart of Getty Square.
He welcomes the $1.6 billion redevelopment project proposed by Struever Fidelco Cappelli L.L.C., the partnership of experienced developers that has acquired purchase options on several nearby commercial properties on Palisade Avenue and New Main Street. The developers”™ offers have “slowed down a bit now,” he said, and the building that Vlahopoulus rents has not been directly affected by SFC”™s plans for River Park Center, a high-rising complex that as proposed would put 950 residential units, about 635,000 square feet of office, retail and restaurant space, a 2,200-seat movie theater and a 6,500-seat minor league baseball stadium within one to two blocks of the Galaxy.
“I”™d like to see it the way it was 50 years ago,” said Vlahopoulus, a Bronx resident who with a family partner bought the Yonkers restaurant in 1983. “Downtown Yonkers used to be the mecca of the area and Westchester County.”
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“It”™s happening little by little,” he said of the welcomed change. “It gets there. I think it”™s time.”
Vlahopoulus says it”™s time too for him to make a long-planned business move that would put him closer to the renascent downtown waterfront. In about six months, he plans to open a Greek-American restaurant, “something a little bit different,” at 22-24 Main St., a 6,000-square-foot building near the Riverdale Avenue intersection that he bought in 2000 with plans to someday open an eatery there. The largely vacant building, which formerly housed a music store, now has one tenant, Heart & Soul, a women”™s clothing boutique.
Vlahopoulus said he will spend at least $500,000 to renovate 3,000 square feet of second-floor space for three offices and build and equip a 1,500-square-foot restaurant. The 74-seat restaurant will include a 1,600-square-foot outdoor café on tree-lined property owned by the Yonkers Community Development Agency. Vlahopoulus expects to have about 10 employees there.
The restaurateur and Yonkers architect Steven M. Asaro this month presented site plans to the Yonkers Planning Board, which is reviewing the project. “Everything is ready to go,” he said. “I think the timing is perfect right now.” With the recent openings of two luxury apartment and condominium residences, 66 Main St. and Hudson Park North near the city pier, “I think I”™m right on time.”
Vlahopoulus said his will be the first Greek-American restaurant downtown. “There”™s not that many restaurants downtown,” he said. “We have enough but not enough. Restaurants, you can never have enough. It attracts people to the area. It brings people from other places.”
He said he plans to serve high-quality food at prices “affordable” to some of those same Yonkers residents he now serves. “I don”™t want to scare the people,” he said. “I want people to feel comfortable coming in.”
“What do you think of ”˜Corfu,”™ ”˜Corfu Garden”™?”  The restaurateur solicited outside opinion on some names he has in mind for his new place.
Corfu is the large island in the Ionian Sea among a chain of Greek islands on which he and his wife, Areta “Rita” Vlahopoulus, were raised. Immigrating to New York City in 1970, Vlahopoulus”™s first business enterprise was an ice-cream wholesaler to pushcart vendors in downtown Manhattan. He later worked as a parking garage and repair shop mechanic before marrying and joining his father-in-law in his Bronx restaurant business. In 1983, he and his business partner made a $50,000 down payment on the Galaxy in Getty Square.
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The future of his restaurant behind the clock?
“This is where my bread and butter comes from,”™ Vlahopoulus said, avoiding a direct answer. But monthly rent has climbed from $2,000 to $3,000 to $9,600, he said. With redevelopment just around the corner, it seems the time is right to move on.
For 25 years, Vlahopoulus has collected plans for the redevelopment of the Getty Square area. In his restaurant basement, “I have a case of plans for what they were supposed to do in this area,” he said. That case holds relics of lost or abandoned causes.
After a recent public hearing at nearby City Hall on the SFC project, “I said, I”™m going to go back and throw out all those plans, because this time it looks like they”™re going to accomplish what they said they”™re going to do,” Vlahopoulus said.
So has he thrown them out?
“Not yet,” Vlahopoulus said. He smiled. “I want to see the shovels first. I want to see the shovels in the ground.”
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