This restaurant opened to great reviews a few years back, but somewhere along the line something went very wrong. I’m just not sure what happened. I did some research to see if I could find out why and when it closed, however I can't seem to find any information about its demise.It is an attractive building and it is located across the street from the Biltmore Fashion Square shopping center along the Camelback corridor. It’s a great location but for some reason restaurants on that side of the road have not done too well. Next door to this place was a beautifully designed Hard Rock Café that closed a few years back. Both buildings are now sitting empty.
It makes me wonder why this little area on the south side of Camelback Road has had such bad luck.
12 comments:
There do seem to be locations like that — they look perfect, but businesses just don't last. Strange.
I like this quirky building though. I hope that it's made good use of. Such a waste otherwise.
That trend seems odd, doesn't it. The building you feature is quite unusual. I wonder what a marketing survey would reveal?
The restaurant business can be very fickle. I think it is especially tough for new restaurants to establish themselves.
Incredible building! This is modern (a bit over the top) Art Deco! Fantastic!
an interesting building and I had eaten there once or twice when it was open. It seems that the location is just a little bit out of the way for most of the pedestrian traffic and there are so many good restaurants at the 24th st and Camelback corner that they all probably could not survive especially when the market started falling and there was less mortgage companies, title companies, residential home building, which means less business lunches and dinners.
It is wierd how some buildings seem to be jinxed with businesses. Almost every place I've lived, I've noticed a few buildings where businesses just come and go and nothing seems to be able to survive in that location long term. Wierd! Love this building though - great design!
This is a fantastic building! I hope it gets a new life.
I love the Jetsons look of the place.
Some one kept yelling "Marco" and no one answered "polo" and thus no one could find the door?
tee hee. :p
Bermuda Triangle effect. Maybe.
Two things went wrong:
First, the complex on the south side of Camelback between 26th and 28th streets was constructed so as to showcase the Hard Rock Cafe and hide everything else behind it. Nothing in the spaces behind HRC could ever attain the visibility necessary to survive, and now that HRC has moved Downtown, the center is no longer viable. I expect it will be torn down and replaced by something else whenever the economy recovers.
Second, by the time Marco Polo go to that location, it was a shadow of its former self. The original Marco Polo was a charming little restaurant in a Safeway shopping center since bulldozed to make way for Nordstrom in Scottsdale. It served an interesting Chinese-Italian fusion menu. In the late '90s, however, it moved to the space mentioned above, rebranded itself as an upscale supper club, and started serving what I found to be rather dull bull market cuisine (non-stop steak and lobster). The charm was gone, and when the bull market was gone too, it was hard for this place to survive.
It looks like a great place. How sad that it is sitting empty.
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