Danbury businessman has high hopes for Ives Street café
DANBURY — A 35-yearold businessman who sold his downtown restaurant during the height of the coronavirus crisis last year says it was a mistake and wants to open a new café one block away on Ives Street.
The former owner of Billy Bean’s restaurant on White Street has eyes on an empty 5,000-square-foot restaurant and bar on Ives Street — a one-time destination district for Danbury nightlife that has been dark for a decade.
“It’s dead,” said Wilson Pelaez, the owner of a Danbury moving company who wants to get back into the food and drink business with a Spanish-American eatery called “Downtown Eleven Café and Bar. “People say (Ives Street) used to be a good place to go for everybody.”
Pelaez is referring to the former heart of Danbury’s entertainment district, which includes CityCenter green the defunct Tuxedo Junction.
The closed restaurant that Pelaez wants to convert into a 120-seat cafe and bar with karaoke on the weekends is at 11 Ives St. That’s the home of the former Horizon Restaurant, which was shut down by the city in 2009, when 550 teens were found inside where only 240 people were permitted by code. Another 200 teens were outside Horizon waiting to get in, police said. It took officers from three jurisdictions two hours to disperse the crowd.
Although Pelaez says his plans involve “nothing like that,” he told Hearst Connecticut Media last week that he expected concerned questions about the venue’s past when he and his attorney appear before the Zoning Commission in January for a special permit.
“This is not going to be easy,” Pelaez said of the approval process. “But I don’t think this will be a good place without liquor.”
The reason: hard working people want to go out enjoy themselves, he said.
It’s even more the case now with the worst of the coronavirus pandemic behind the city, and residents patronizing eateries again, such as his former restaurant Billy Bean’s.
“I sold that place a year ago because things were getting tough, but they’re doing good now,” Pelaez said of the new owners. “I made a mistake.”
The empty building that Pelaez would lease on Ives Street still has vestiges of its former life as a club, including a kitchen, two bars, and a DJ platform by the dance floor in the back of the building fronting National Place.
“I won’t have to spend money on that,” he said.
It is too early to say whether Pelaez’s interest in Ives Street will spark more investment.
A half-block away from the empty restaurant in question, the city is poised to sell the former Tuxedo Junction nightclub to a bank that will demolish it as part of an office building project at Main and White streets.
The sale of Tuxedo Junction, which is expected once the City Council conducts a public hearing , marks the end of Danbury’s plans to give the storied club one more act as a community theater.
The Savings Bank of Danbury plans to replace Tuxedo Junction with a grassy lot.
Meanwhile Pelaez has high hopes for Downtown Eleven Café and Bar.
“I think this can be good,” he said.