A popular Italian eatery in Guilderland will soon be demolished to make way for a new environmentally friendly restaurant. Mangia, located in Stuyvesant Plaza, will be torn down in June so that the owners, White Management, can construct a greener restaurant built using many recycled materials.
`It’s a very popular restaurant, but our building at Stuyvesant Plaza is 55 years old, and it’s a structural mess,` said Mark Burgasser, vice president of White Management, owner of the building that was formally a Howard Johnson’s restaurant. `It was a great opportunity to completely rebuild in an environmentally sound way.`
The new 6,000-square-foot restaurant will be called Creo, which in Latin means `to create.`
The building design will feature `green` elements inside and out. The restaurant will have an organic grass rooftop, recycled rubber and cork floors, energy-efficient lighting and tabletops made from compressed 100 percent recycled paper.
`We want to use this as an opportunity to show that you can do high-quality design that happens to be environmentally friendly,` said Scott Townsend of 3t Architects in Albany, which designed the new restaurant. `To the best of my knowledge, none of the restaurants (in the Albany area) have done it.`
The exterior design may be finalized, but menu selections are still being ironed out.
`We’re working on an eclectic menu,` said Burgasser. `It will be casual, very family friendly; we’re going to have a wood-fired oven, rotisserie and grill,` along with daily specials, he said.
The Mangia in Slingerlands, and another in Plattsburgh, will remain open.
`We are committed to keeping Mangia in Slingerlands open and expect that all of our current customers will frequent the Slingerlands location while Creo is being completed,` said Burgasser. An auction will be held at the property on Tuesday, May 27. Demolition is expected to begin in early June and Creo is slated to open in mid-September.
In other restaurant news, the former Fresno’s restaurant at 1620 Western Ave. is currently undergoing renovations to become a Japanese steakhouse. Owner Tommy Chang expects the restaurant to open in a month and it will feature Japanese fare prepared hibachi style. “