����Ӱ��AV

Developer told the Rio Nuevo Board of Directors on Wednesday that he has 10 letters of intent from businesses interested in coming to what he has dubbed Tucson Gastro Park, including and .

The site is on the north side of Broadway, from Cherry to Warren avenues, where Rio Nuevo rescued historic 100-year-old bungalows from the Broadway widening project in 2019.

Anadranistakis told the board workers have been on-site since Sept. 17, the day he took sole ownership of Thelma and Louise Development LLC, the company Tucson developer Randi Dorman and hotelier Moniqua Lane formed in 2021 to build the Tucson Gastronomy Collective.

Lane left the venture sometime before Anadranistakis joined in 2023. Anadranistakis said he bought out Dorman’s interest in the venture in September.

Anadranistakis said Dorman’s original plans that called for shining a spotlight on the city’s UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation are still in play, although he plans to broaden them by “trying to make sure that every restauranteur, every drink that is served, everything that’s at that site focuses on Tucson’s 4,000-year, very rich food history.”

“It’s going to be a gastro park, so it’s going to really focus on the best of the best of Tucson,” Anadranistakis said, adding that the plan includes partnering with Tucson’s top chefs and “folks that are really well known in the gastronomy scene here” as well as collaborating with other UNESCO cities in Mexico and around the world including Thessaloniki, Greece.

He updated the Rio Nuevo board on Wednesday on progress at the site, laying out plans that include acquiring an additional seven to nine adjacent spots on the Bungalow Block to create enhanced kitchen space. The historic bungalows are too small to prepare food, so they will serve as gastro lounges, each with their own theme, he said.

“We have another building in escrow that’s just to the west of of the property and in addition, we are still working with Rio Nuevo to see if there’s any other properties,” Anadranistakis said in an interview later Wednesday. “We’ve been promised some additional properties at that site. So once we have all of that information, we’ll be able to form our final plan.”

He said work crews and subcontractors, meanwhile, are doing property enhancements that have included installing a custom metal fence around the entire site.

Tucson Gastro Park is working with Rio Nuevo to get approval to close part of Cherry Avenue for pedestrian traffic to make it safer to cross the street near the parking lot.

Anadranistakis said he won’t have a timeline of when the project will be complete until after he submits the development plans to the city and finds out “what we may be able to get from Rio Nuevo as part of this plan,” he said.

Rio Nuevo took no action Wednesday, but Board Chairman Fletcher McCusker said the board could make a decision on the project at its next regular meeting.