It was looking like they will never find anyone who'd pay for the space. But when a wall got knocked down, revealing a mid-1800s coal-fired oven, then that's when interested parties came knocking. Is this an isolated case or is a pizza oven now New York real estate's most viable asset? Claudine Ko of New York Post has the report.
Franco Facili was already beginning to feel anxious as his space in the desolate Red Hook, Brooklyn block underneath the BQE, has been sitting in the market for already a year. Facili and his real estate agent, Frank Galeano, was struggling to find anyone who'd take the empty space, until Anna Viertel and Dave Sclarow, who had been running a mobile pizzeria for years, found their way to the property.
The couple had been searching for a place to put up their upscale pizzeria and in 2013 found the right one; not necessarily because of the location, but because of the one key amenity that would soon become the very attraction of their long dreamed business.
After two years of negotiating the lease and renovating the space, they have finally opened their very own Pizza Moto in October, and they have the old oven to thank for their consistently packed nights.
"It's the centerpiece of our business," says Viertel. "Emotions, technical details and age are important."
The space used to be John Grace Bakery, to which the oven was originally built for back in the 1800s. It housed a coal-oven pizzeria, a sandwich shop, a cigar-maker, and a Papa John's. Facili wasn't sure when the original oven was covered up when he bought the place in 2007, but Viertel and Sclarow were sure thrilled that it has resurfaced. An oven of a similar kind would now cost between $30,000 and $50,000.
"It's a piece of New York history," says Viertel
Almost a similar thing happened with a Chelsea space that came with a $20,000 Neapolitan cooker custom-built by famed oven-maker Stefano Ferrara, and restaurateur Maurizio de Rosa was not going to let the chance slip his hands.
"When you get a chance to play with a Stradivarius, you take it!" he told Eater at the time.
However, despite the oven sonata, the pizzeria he opened, Prova, permanently shut its doors just recently after lukewarm reviews.
With that, it's safe to say that a fancy appliance alone cannot guarantee a great pizza let alone a successful business venture.
