Restaurant owner Elio Rugova was coated in construction dust on a recent afternoon as he oversaw the build-out at his new venture on the Yonkers waterfront. Joined by his four sons in business, Rugova is pushing to open the Dolphin Restaurant-Bar-Lounge at 1 Van der Donck St. by late May or early June.
An Albanian immigrant and 35-year veteran of the metropolitan restaurant industry, Rugova said he will spend more than $500,000 to renovate the former Pier View Restaurant, which closed when its owners filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in March 2009. The work includes a redesigned kitchen and a bar that will accent an international wine collection, wood, stone and glass finishes on a new nautically themed street facade, new restrooms and LED lighting.
The 7,100-square-foot restaurant seats about 215 customers. The Rugovas expect to receive a city permit to operate an approximately 5,000-square-foot sidewalk dining area. The owner”™s son, Jimmy Rugova, a real estate investor and former mortgage broker in Yonkers, will be the Dolphin”™s general manager, assisted by his brothers Skel, Agron and Driton. The restaurant will employ 20 to 25 workers, the owner said.
For the elder Rugova, the Dolphin in Yonkers is a kind of second act as a restaurateur. In the 1980s, he left his chef”™s position at Captain”™s Table on Manhattan”™s East Side to open his own seafood restaurant, the Dolphin, as chef and partner, which he operated on Lexington Avenue for about seven years. Like its original namesake, the Dolphin in Yonkers will specialize in seafood while offering a varied menu, Rugova said.
Rugova, who leaves Mulino”™s of Westchester in White Plains, where he tended bar for about 20 years, acquired the company, WSH Group 1 L.L.C., that held the restaurant lease after Pier View”™s failure. Westside Hospitality Group, a Manhattan-based bar and restaurant company headed by the late Yonkers firefighter Patrick Joyce, and a Yonkers business partner and fellow firefighter planned to reopen the waterfront restaurant this spring as the The Gas Light Ale House. But Joyce”™s tragic death in October 2009 while attempting to rescue residents from an apartment building fire allegedly set by an arsonist ended the waterfront venture for his grieving survivors.
Gerry Houlihan, of Houlihan & O”™Malley Real Estate Services Inc. in Bronxville, who brokered the deal, credited Joyce”™s widow and successor as president of Westside Hospitality Group, Tara McGuire, and the Joyce family for assisting in and speeding up the change of restaurant owners. Rugova extended his lease to 20 years with landlord Collins Brothers Enterprises L.L.C., the developer from Stamford, Conn., that built the property as part of its Hudson Park North residential and retail complex on the Yonkers waterfront.
“I love the location,” said Rugova, whose neighbors in pierside hospitality include X2O Xaviars on the Hudson. “I love the waterfront.” With the seafood restaurant, “We”™re going to try to make something Yonkers needs and what we need.”
