It’s been a couple months since news broke that Macayo’s Mexican Restaurants was selling its flagship location in downtown Phoenix to a luxury-apartments developer and opening a new location in a repurposed auto shop next door.
Now Macayo’s, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, has announced some details about its plans.
To be located on the southeast corner of Central Avenue and Indianola Avenue (just south of Indian School), the new restaurant will be 5,000 square feet, considerably smaller than the original’s 22,000 square feet.
On the plus side, it’ll finally have a patio. Macayo’s is one of the few Central Avenue restaurants without one.
The adaptive-reuse project will attempt to incorporate the look and feel of mid-century elements from the restaurant’s founding by Woody Johnson in 1952:
(Johnsons’ first restaurant, Woody’s El Nido, opened in 1946, which is why the family-owned chain is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year.)
The current Central Avenue location will remain open through this year. Construction of the new one will start in October and it should be ready by March 2017.
Macayo’s recently closed one of its two Tucson locations, leaving the family-run chain with 11 locations in Arizona and two in Las Vegas.
