Rene Perez
The baked chicken at El Patio Dominican Restaurant is fall-off-the-bone delectable, but for the richer dining experience, come back for the pork, cooked for 11 hours.
“You gotta try the roasted pork,” said owner Rene Perez. “We do that in the Dominican every year for special celebrations, but we do it here every day, and people love it.”
This was a chilly Monday morning at El Patio, when the only breakfast customer was a parking enforcement officer. Perez is a newcomer to the stretch of downtown Harrisburg still known, despite its post-pandemic struggles, as “Restaurant Row.”
What will it take to revive the corridor? Restaurant and club owners hope the city will perk up the sagging streetscape, while they bootstrap their way to a new vision of 2nd Street, restored to its glory days of food, drink and more music than ever before.
Play Our Part
A restaurant was “always a dream for my wife and I,” Perez said. “Mostly for me.”
The native of the Dominican Republic has worked in fast food restaurants in Georgia, Florida and Harrisburg. Choosing the midstate as a nice place to raise their family, the faith-based couple felt guided toward the space familiar to earlier generations as the Sandwich Man. Here, they share their Dominican heritage.
“We know, it’s not the same in Harrisburg as it used to be before,” Perez said. “I think the Lord put us here to do the work. His plan is unique. No one knows what’s going to happen.”
As Perez notes, restaurants need traffic to survive. That traffic has scattered since COVID sent the state workforce and its ancillary lobbyists, consultants and petitioners to their homes.
Harristown Enterprises and other developers continue converting depleted offices into residences. Occupants are “absolutely” patronizing downtown amenities, and even the residents of a planned market-rate, senior independent living complex will “have their pick of places in the city” for spending their disposable income, said President and CEO Brad Jones.
Harristown’s corresponding events to liven up the scene for city residents and visitors include block parties and a free concert series.
“We’re really trying to play our part in enhancing the experience downtown,” Jones said.
Justin Browning, a Restaurant Row veteran and entrepreneur, lauded Harristown’s plan to continue to convert half-empty office buildings to residences. Going forward, Harristown may even weigh condos as a possibility.
“Condos means you’re making an investment in the city rather than renting,” Browning said. “You have a sense of ownership, so I hope that spills over to downtown.”
Joshua Stambaugh,, Loren Browning, Justin Browning, Michael McPhillips of JB Lovedrafts
Puzzle Pieces
At McGrath’s, a Restaurant Row mainstay, busy Friday lunchtimes have shifted to midweek, said owner Adam Sturges. His evening happy hours, dining and after-dinner drinks remain solid, especially when patrons come downtown for entertainment.
“You need it all to work together,” he said. “If there’s a good show at the Forum, then you’ll see a nice jump in business that day.”
Nightlife impresario Ron Kamionka is retiring and spinning off the properties that once attracted patrons to Harrisburg from throughout the region. In the years since the pandemic and internet matchmaking made traditional nightclubs “almost a thing of the past,” 2nd Street has grown visibly shabby, he said.
It’s not just the brown, kraft paper-covered windows but also the tired light posts and the curbs that have sagged to street level.
“It’s going to take, number one, the city showing commitment and doing improvements to the infrastructure to get people to want to risk their capital to come in with a new idea and try it,” Kamionka said.
Harrisburg’s interim director of Housing and Economic Development, Gloria Martin-Roberts, directed questions to the nonprofit Harrisburg Downtown Improvement District (HDID). Todd Vander Woude, HDID executive director, said that he hopes to see updated light poles and curbing, which would be “more of a city thing,” while HDID continues its focus on beautification, such as daily street cleaning and a summertime profusion of flowers.
Downtown business areas have their cyclical ups and downs, but Harrisburg remains well stocked with food and beverage options, plus a full slate of summertime events, Vander Woude said.
“It always takes time,” he said. The nationwide trend toward residential downtowns will “be good for everybody. Harrisburg is very walkable. Once we get the residents back into the apartments and other places, it’s going to help the restaurant scene, as we get more traffic down here for dinnertime.”
Harristown has a beautification plan to “tidy up” the corridor with lighting, curbs, planters, greenery and “all those things that set the table for a nice environment,” Jones said. He hopes to implement the plan and secure funding in collaboration with the HDID and state, city and county sources.
Crank It Up
The entertainment that brings dining and drinking patrons downtown—Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra concerts, plays at Gamut Theatre and Open Stage—is about to get a jolt.
Browning, co-owner of JB Lovedrafts and Nocturnal, and also reviver of Kamionka’s Sawyers, plans to transform the former Federal Taphouse into Capital City Music Hall. The space will complement other local venues, such as XL Live, and create a destination where patrons can bop to favorite acts while they drop their dollars on local restaurants, pubs, hotels and souvenirs.
“As we get older, we learn things,” Browning said. “It doesn’t have to be copy and paste. We can have some fun.”
Capital City Music Hall’s Head of Operations Michael McPhillips shared that they are “happy to bring a safe, reliable venue to 2nd Street.” As patrons streamed to their Mechanicsburg music spot, Lovedrafts Brewing Co., from different states, they realized that “it made much more sense to move that kind of tourism engine into the city we care about so much. We’re very, very happy to do that—not just for us but so everybody can see a large uptick.”
Safety First
Kamionka has intentionally sold many of his properties to Browning to help create a complementary set of businesses.
The area is “heading in the right direction,” Kamionka said, and fine and casual dining continues to grace Restaurant Row: Stock’s, Café Fresco, Carley’s Ristorante, Cork & Fork, Bacco, Burger Yum, to name a few. But the balance of nightclubbing to dining is tilting away from the days when restaurants hummed with Capitol-crowd customers.
“One thing I don’t want to have done is spend a career building all this and having downtown like it was in the ‘80s, when people went there for drugs or hookers,” Kamionka said. “It needs that synergy of places, and that’s not going to happen, adding on places to fill the empty buildings, until people feel comfortable enough to make the investment.”
The notion of “comfortable” encompasses the difficult realities of downtown city living.
Browning believes the city can continue to work with establishment owners “to help keep things safe down here, keep things well lit.”
“Let’s update the sidewalks, make things brighter and more uniform,” he said. “I could see more greenery down here—something that makes it nicer for walking, especially in the evening.”
For Sturges, streetscape upgrades, fewer panhandlers and more attractions would help dispel the city’s undeserved stigma as unsafe. He upholds strict standards of entry and serving at his three downtown and Midtown establishments—Mad Moose and Sturges Speakeasy as well as McGrath’s—and keeps regular hours, even during slow times, because businesses grow when they offer consistent hours and consistent products.
“There’s a lot of things that go into making a city a place that professional people want to move into, things like theaters and museums and encouraging an environment that isn’t just a mass amount of people living in one area,” he said. “I can only do so much to try to convince people that it’s not a dangerous city to be in.”
Adam Sturges
Turning a Corner
Sturges will never retire. This is a man who gets super-excited from contracting a vendor of better pepperoni—“just trying to make things better for tomorrow.”
“I make changes every day,” he said. “It’s those little things you keep progressing, and you keep trying to do the best you can.”
Browning’s clubs strive for an experience at every level—quite literally, from the first-floor rock venue of JB Lovedrafts to the third-floor country-western bar with saddle barstools at Nocturnal.
“Our goal is to help have a resurgence down here,” he said.
For his part, Jones has tallied $230 million in downtown residential projects possible within 10 years and feels they can help re-establish bustle to the dining and nightclub scene.
“You’re stabilizing everything with the addition of these customers,” he said. “You’re replacing essentially the office buildings with residential buildings. Those are strong customers. We’ve got a lot going on. A lot of good stuff, as always.”
El Patio owner Perez is grateful for the support of God, his landlord and the community, including high-level city and police officials who enjoy his food. Just as Sandwich Man provided a downtown anchor for decades from the cheery, comfortable space he now occupies, he hopes to provide leadership through “a Dominican place downtown that stays here for years.”
“We’re here to do what it takes and to improve every day, on a daily basis and a weekly basis,” he said. “We pray for everyone to have a good meal and leave blessed from here. No less than that. We’re always going to be here with a smile on our face to take care of the customers.”
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