Brooklyn V’s marks 3 years with Thursday party, new private room & 2nd location

Brooklyn V’s Pizza in Gilbert will celebrate its third anniversary with a party from 5:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, the officially unveiling of its new private room (pictured above), and the announcement of a second location opening in 2017.

Family-run Brooklyn V’s was launched on the northeast corner of Lindsay and Warner in 2013 by chef and co-owner Vito LoPiccolo, who was born in Sicily and had an Italian restaurant in Staten Island, N.Y., for 12 years before moving to the Valley.

In three years, the restaurant has built a large following – including former New Yorkers from all parts of the Valley – hungry for hand-tossed pizzas, calzones, strombolis, sandwiches, and pasta dishes.

Thursday’s anniversary party will feature live music from Dr. Dave, who will be giving away raffle prizes every half-hour. Prizes include gift cards, gas cards, and Beats headphones.  The grand prize is a 4K TV.

It also will be an opportunity to check out the family-run pizzeria’s new addition – a 2,100-square-foot private room that can accommodate as many as 40 people. (The original space was just 1,700 square feet.)

The room immediately provides much-needed overflow space on busy weekends, when diners often have had to wait outside.

Thanks to its flexible configurations (pictured), the room also can accommodate anything from corporate meetings to birthday and anniversary parties to luncheons and small receptions.

And, in a bit of breaking news, LoPiccolo just signed a lease for a second location. It will share a building with Dairy Queen on the southeast corner of Rittenhouse and the Ellsworth Loop.

Construction work on the 2,600-square-foot space is expected to take about six months.

‘‘A lot of people from Queen Creek come here (the Gilbert location),’’ says LoPiccolo, who lives in neighboring San Tan Valley. ‘‘I’m getting T-shirts saying, ‘Brooklyn just landed in Queen Creek.’

‘‘Queen Creek is 35,000 people, but it’s going to be 90,000 in a couple of years,’’ he says. ‘‘Hopefully, I make it. I just feel if somebody knows there’s a mom-and-pop place – I mean, that’s where I’d like to go.

‘‘I’m pretty sure people will give me a chance.’’