New owner has vision for the Ho Toy building
2 separate restaurants, LGBTQ+ dance club eyed
The calendar that hangs on a kitchen wall in the old Ho Toy restaurant is still flipped to December 2022, the secondto-last of approximately 768 months the Downtown mainstay was in business.
The standard Chinese picture menu is still stapled to the wall up front. Dishes that long ago seemed exotic — egg foo young, orange chicken, moo goo gai pan — now seem as faded as their photos.
Standing beneath Ho Toy’s paper lanterns in front of a space heater that was the only source of warmth in the building on a cold day in January, Tora Bonnier saw more than what used to be. The new owner of the building at 11 W. State St. is a 30-year-old Capital University Law School graduate who has raced cars semi-professionally and studied wine at the Cordon Bleu in Paris.
And she has plans that are as flashy as her resume.
If her dreams are realized, the building that still seems like a throwback — a dining room floor tile stamped “OCT 1973” marks the date it first opened as Burger King store No. 1290 — will be catapulted into a new frontier for dining and entertainment in Columbus. Bonnier has separate ventures planned for each of the four floors in a 9,200square-foot space she has rechristened as the Bonnier Building:
● On the first floor, a restaurant called The State House will serve iconic Ohio dishes such as Barberton chicken, Polish boy sandwiches and Cincinnati chili to Statehouse tourists, Downtown workers and evening diners.
● In a mezzanine area that served as extra dining space for previous occupants, a retro-futuristic space-themed fine-dining restaurant called Xenon will function as a “fully immersive space station experience.”
● An LGBTQ+ dance club and drag bar with a touch-screen, programmable dance floor and wall will go into the basement. Its name: Sous-sol, which means basement in French. (The ceiling looks low, but it has been drag queen-tested; Bonnier had a friend don her highest wig and highest heels to test it out.)
● Rentable coworking spaces will be carved out on the third floor.
The new owner’s plans are a bit against the tide of a post-pandemic hospitality industry still navigating through staffing shortages and rising costs. LGBTQ+ spaces have been on the
decline for more than a decade, too, as queer culture moves further into the mainstream.
But Bonnier is charging forward. “I’m trying to change things up a bit,” she said. “If you ask anyone who knows me, they’ll say, ‘If anyone can do it, she can.”
Austin Lucas-mattox, a law school classmate who is Bonnier’s business partner in Sous-sol, said exactly that.
“I like to think I’m a creative person, but when it comes to over-the-top creative thinking, she’s the one,” he said. “She gets an idea in her head, and she has the confidence and the will to do it. She’s a force of nature.”
Bonnier, a New Albany native, is part of a Swedish family that has been in the printing and publishing business for more than 200 years. She recently sat on the board of a family foundation that supports business development in Sweden, while her father is a former chairman of the Swedish-american Chambers of Commerce.
The Downtown building and the four businesses she plans to start in it are her own venture, though. She bought the State Street building in August 2023 for $422,506 by obtaining a Small Business Administration loan and mortgaging her condo.
“I’m a very fortunate young woman. I recognize that,” Bonnier said. But while her background has given her the ability to dream big, she said she’s undertaking her project without family money. In fact, when asked if anyone has told her she might be dreaming a little too big, Bonnier said: “Yes, my whole family. My grandparents. My uncle, who also started restaurants, thinks I’m nuts.”
As she awaits city building permits, Bonnier already has sourced the Soussol dance floor and wall, which will react to people’s steps and touches and also be able to display images and graphics. They’re from the same company that does screens in Times Square, she said.
She also has commissioned an artist to create a large chandelier with changing colors and moving lights that will hang above The State House dining room. From below, it will look like a beautiful piece of art, Bonnier said. From eye level inside the second-floor, space-themed Xenon — itself designed to look “like a giant Mento” (candy) —
the piece will look like a glimpse into space.
They’re destined to garner attention
— particularly an LGBTQ+ club a halfblock from the Statehouse, where legislation to restrict healthcare for transgender
children has been enacted over Gov. Mike Dewine’s veto and legislation to restrict drag performances has been introduced.
“Part of me is excited that it’s right across from the Statehouse,” said Bonnier, who identifies as bisexual. “Let’s make a point, right?”
Brad Henry, a DJ who has played at Columbus Pride events and local LGBTQ+ clubs for decades, said the plans she has shared with him for the dance club include ideas that will be new to the city. They’ll at least be firsts in a good while: Sous-sol will be the first new LGBTQ+ dance club to open in Columbus since 2013.
“Tora has a big vision,” he said. “I’m excited to see where it goes.”
Bonnier said she hopes to open The State House in July. She plans to preview Sous-sol with an outdoor party during Columbus Pride in June, but its grand opening depends on needed elevator upgrades. Xenon will be the longest-term project, with an opening projected in late 2025 or early 2026.
rvitale@dispatch.com