By Mark Webber | The Republic The Johnny Carino’s restaurant closed Oct. 11, 2023 and moving trucks were at the restaurant.
Riviera Maya Mexican Restaurant has confirmed it plans to stay at NexusPark “for the time being” while opening a third location of the restaurant chain in Bartholomew County at the former site of Johnny Carino’s Country Italian restaurant.
Restaurant officials plan to remodel the former Italian restaurant at 870 Creekview Drive and bring in new furniture and equipment, said Riviera Maya General Manager Pancho Rodrigues.
If all goes to plan, Rodrigues said he tentatively expects the new location to open by November or December. The new location will largely have the same menu as the other two locations of the restaurant, he said.
“The plan is to open a Mexican restaurant (at the former Johnny Carino’s site),” he said, who later added that it would be a third location for the restaurant chain that has had a location on the south side of the former FairOaks Mall, now NexusPark, since 2006 and opened a second location in Taylorsville called Riviera Maya Express in 2022.
The update on the restaurant’s plans comes after a company whose officers have ties to Riviera Maya bought the 1.85-acre site of the former Italian restaurant for $1.2 million on July 1, according to public real estate records. The site includes the 6,517-square-foot building that used to house the restaurant, as well as 44,398-square-foot parking lot.
The acquisition raised questions about what the company’s plans are for the former Johnny Carino’s site and what implications, if any, it would have for the two Riviera Maya locations in Bartholomew County.
Rodrigues said the company acquired the site to expand in the Columbus market and initially plans to have three locations in Bartholomew County.
However, the company also plans to reevaluate in two years whether it will stay at its 8,900-square-foot location at NexusPark after officials raised the restaurant’s rent upwards of 55% this year, Rodrigues said.
Rodrigues said monthly rent for their space at NexusPark rose from around $9,000 in July to about $14,000 or $15,000 in August, “and then after a couple years it’s going to have another increment and then another increase in five years.”
“It’s just going to keep going up and up,” Rodrigues said, referring to the rent.
The restaurant recently signed a five-year lease at NexusPark that took effect Thursday, city officials said.
“The rent at NexusPark is expensive,” Rodrigues said. “They raised the rent big time. …In two years, we will see what our options are, and then we will go from there. …For the next two years, we’ll still be here (at NexusPark), and hopefully by then we’ll be open over there (at the former Johnny Carino’s), and we’ll go from there.”
The former Johnny Carino’s went on the market after closing its doors last year, after the restaurant’s sales struggled to match increases in rent, which General Manager Quentin Smith attributed to inflation at the time.
The property’s previous owner, San Diego, Calif.-based Arc CafeUSA001 LLC, sold the building and land at a loss after purchasing the property for just over $3 million in September 2013.
When adjusting for inflation, the 2013 sales price would be the equivalent of just over $4 million today, far higher than the $1.2 million it sold for on July 1, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s inflation calculator.
As of Wednesday, Riviera Maya officials had not applied for any renovation permits for the former Italian restaurant, county officials said. Generally, property owners are required to obtain a renovation permit unless the renovations are “cosmetic only,” said Michelle Cox, the county’s chief code enforcement officer.
