Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030030
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
And Paul and Doris Etzel aren't telling when Pulaski will have a new restaurant on its Main Street.
Actually, it's an old restaurant coming back under new ownership. The Renaissance was a popular eating place in downtown Pulaski under the ownership of Nelson Boan.
It closed more than a year ago. But soon - sometime after this holiday weekend, Paul Etzel says - he and his wife will reopen it.
Etzel, 39, said he wants to fine-tune the quality of both the food and service even after he starts serving meals. That's why he doesn't want to stage a high-profile grand opening right at the start.
One day he will simply open the door, he said. "My wife and myself will be the only people who will know when we'll open."
There will be some changes. Etzel is redesigning the facility. He will get an ABC license to serve alcoholic beverages. Once he is established, he plans to expand into the second floor with a bar and lounge.
He will hire 20 to 25 people, some of whom worked before at the Renaissance, at the start. "I'm a very firm believer in training, a highly trained staff," he said.
Opening a restaurant is nothing new to Etzel, but opening his own is.
"I started working at 14 in a restaurant," said the Long Island, N.Y., native. "I worked a couple hours a day just sweeping floors or whatever, but it was the restaurant business that put me through college."
He majored in accounting at Queen's College, but found within a year after graduation that he did not like working at a desk with just a calculator for company. What he wanted to do, he found, was what he had been doing all along.
"It's the contact with people," he said. "You see people every day, getting to talk to customers."
Over the years, he has worked at many levels in the restaurant business, "anything from fast foods to a Shoney's-type restaurant up to a Pargo's," he said. "You name it, I've been involved in it."
Since 1990, he has been director of operations for the Pargo's restaurants in Christiansburg and Roanoke.
For the last 10 years of his career, he has been finding sites and overseeing construction of restaurants for others and getting them up and running. "It actually takes nine months out of your life," he said.
"I love the business . . . but it's so time-consuming," he said. "So I decided the next restaurant I opened would be my own."
He wanted to spend more time with Doris and their three sons, Gregory, 11; Jason, 7, and Brian, 4, so the new Renaissance will be a family affair, he said.
He and his wife have been married for 12 years, and it was the restaurant business that brought them together. "She used to work for me in a restaurant in New York," he said.
They came to the New River Valley on a visit and liked it so much that they moved to the region in 1981. They live in Christiansburg but plan to move to Pulaski next year, when all three of their sons would be changing schools anyway.
They had left for a few years when Etzel was hired to build some restaurants for someone in Maryland. "We realized we missed Virginia," he said. "That's why I took the job at Pargo's - an opportunity to come back."
He was not too familiar with Pulaski, but had heard it was "pretty much of a dead town." But recently, he said, "I've been reading so much about Pulaski in the paper. . . . That's when I decided to come down and take a look."
Etzel said he found a completely different town than the one he had heard described earlier. The Pulaski Main Street program under Roscoe Cox has succeeded in attracting new businesses and getting empty stores occupied once more.
"I saw this restaurant up for sale," Etzel said. "I looked in the window. I thought it was something I was able to work with."
He continued his visits to Pulaski for several months until the day he ran into Cox. They talked for two hours about restaurant possibilities, and Etzel became convinced that this was the right place and time for him to make a go of it.
He said Alma Holston, Pulaski Town Council liaison with the Main Street program, also had been supportive and convincing about the future of Main Street. The downtown business section is on the move, he decided.
"I think there's a lot more going on in the community," he said. "Now we just need the commitment and intensity to last."
by CNB