Mexican restaurant opening in Centerville

The new El Toro Mexican Bar & Grill restaurant in south Centerville will host a ribbon-cutting and grand opening this Friday, Jan. 18, with giveaways and other special activities.

The event will kick off with a ribbon-cutting with Centerville city officials at 5 p.m. Friday, and will continue until 9 p.m. with a live radio broadcast, margarita samples for those over 21, and other giveaways, according to the El Toro Facebook events page. A portion of the sales will be donated to the Pink Ribbon Girls.

The new restaurant, which first started serving customers three weeks ago, is located in a 4,627-square-foot space at 894-C S. Main St., the previous Buffalo Wings & Rings space in the Centerville Square Shopping Center at Ohio 48 and Spring Valley Pike.

This is the 13th restaurant for the family-owned, Dayton-based Mexican restaurant chain, which is also renovating the former TGI Fridays restaurant at 2022 Miamisburg-Centerville Road in the South Towne Center to open a restaurant there.

Enrique Alvarez, district manager for El Toro, said plans call for shutting down the existing El Toro restaurant at 2335 Miamisburg-Centerville Road when the new restaurant opens in the former TGI Fridays.

But the proposal is facing headwinds. A PUCO staff member last month weighed in against the proposal.

“Staff ... finds that the company has not demonstrated a need to construct any additional resources at this time,” PUCO staff utility specialist Timothy Benedict testified.

PUCO commission members are still free to reach their own conclusions.

Jonathan Lesser, with the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, agreed with PUCO staff. He said electric generating plants and renewable projects should be built in the marketplace “without involvement of monopoly utilities and charges to their captive customers.”

“AEP’s regulatory proposal transfers financial and operating risk of power plants from AEP shareholders to AEP Ohio’s captive monopoly customer,” Lesser has testified.