Former owner of The Baggy Knee, partner to open restaurant near mall
The former long-time owner of The Baggy Knee restaurant in downtown Greensburg has teamed with the wife of the former president of Westmoreland Distributing to build and operate a freestanding restaurant at Westmoreland Mall.
Pat Germano and Michelle Wast, through their G&W Food Co., will build a 7,400-square-foot, as-yet unnamed facility just east of Denny's restaurant, near Route 30 East in the mall parking lot. The restaurant and bar will seat 226. Pittsburgh's Repal Construction is the builder, while Baltimore architect Darrell Davidson is in charge of design.
In the planning stages for roughly three years, the new restaurant's location was Germano's first choice. However, nothing clicked until new owners took over the mall at the end of 2002.
"I had originally approached the old ownership of the mall (a limited partnership, Westmoreland Mall Associates), but they didn't want to subdivide the property, which in Pennsylvania is something you must do with a project like this," Germano said. When Chattanooga, Tenn.-based CBL & Associates Properties Inc. acquired the mall for $112.8 million in December, Germano gave his dream another shot.
"They had just taken over the mall, and I came to them in January of this year," Germano said. "They were receptive, but they had other things on their minds."
Germano also had looked at building his restaurant near the Four Points and Super 8 motels across Route 30, but that was only until he gained an audience with the CBL executives.
Once Germano ruled out space within the mall as too confining, and the Tennessee group understood the nuances of subdividing for a tenant, things began to happen.
Provided all required permits and approvals are granted, groundbreaking on the restaurant and bar should happen next month, with the facility to open in mid-May or early June.
For Germano, it will be a return to the restaurant business, something he excelled at while the owner for 17 years of The Baggy Knee. "It's what I do," he said.
