Cutting-edge craftsmanship coming to Beach bar

The bars at Guadalajara, a Mexican restaurant, will have fiber-optic counters like those featured in larger cities. (Mort Fryman photos | the virginian-pilot)

By Richard Quinn
The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH

Caked in dust and still half-built, the bars inside Guadalajara at Town Center weren't much to look at last week.

The tabletops had a faded, bluish hue, speckled with white. A veneer of soot coated the beveled edges of checkerboard tile. And the stick-frame underbellies were naked, interior wires and piping exposed.

Give it time.

In a few weeks, the bars will be a Hampton Roads first - fiber-optic counters more Vegas than Pembroke.

Crafted by a Canadian firm, they were hand-built in Toronto, snapped into pieces, trucked to Virginia Beach and reassembled by some of the same hands. The two bars house 24,000 optical fibers and 11 metal halide bulbs that light the surface from below like a disco ball at the infamous Studio 54 - not to be confused with Studio 56, new Town Center lofts under construction down the street from Guadalajara.

The technology stretches over 109 feet and is covered by a protective layer of 145 gallons of resin. The edges are finished with imported Italian tile.

The bars - one observer called them pieces of art - cost $180,000.

"This is not Virginia Beach," said Antony Facciponte, a founder of Weezer Industries, the company that built the bars. "This is like bigger city, more cosmopolitan."

The bars - the largest Facciponte has ever built - are the slow-simmering brainchild of Jerry Rodriguez, a successful restaurateur who owns a chain of five Guadalajara eateries in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The Town Center location is on Columbus Street, across from the Westin Hotel & Residences.

"A lot of people have this concept of a Mexican restaurant being cheap," Rodriguez said. "We want to make it different."

The bars are certainly that.

One snakes 76 feet, with a series of turns and seating for nearly 40 people. A smaller counter is 33 feet long and bent like a horseshoe.

Antony Facciponte of Weezer Industries puts finishing touches on one of the bars at Guadalajara. The bars house 24,000 optical fibers and 11 metal halide bulbs that light the surface from below.

Both are equipped with hidden light boxes where 14-inch color wheels rotate at one revolution per minute. The effect is a slow-motion version of a kaleidoscope as the bar seems to undulate in waves.

The view differs depending on where patrons are sitting. At one end, the bar may appear as a cascade of water. At the other, it may look like rolling clouds. "It's up to you," Facciponte said.

Fiber-optic bar tops are nothing new - at least to Las Vegas casinos, New York City hot spots and Washington, D.C. nightclubs. In Hampton Roads, though, not so much.

"There might be a lighted bar top somewhere," Rodriguez said. "Nothing fiber-optic."

Rodriguez, who travels frequently, said he first got the idea from a Rainforest Cafe he visited three years ago. He saw the technology and found out it was installed by Facciponte's company.

Rodriguez did little with the information because he didn't have any place to put the fancy lighting at the time. Then Armada Hoffler, the developer behind Town Center, lobbied him to open one of his Guadalajara restaurants in the center.

He resisted. The company pushed harder. He relented earlier this year. By May, he decided his new franchise needed just a little something extra.

"Something different," he said. "Something Town Center doesn't have."

He remembered the Rainforest Cafe and called Facciponte. The craftsman was reluctant. He normally worked with casinos and chain eateries that can afford his expertise.

"When we first got the inquiry, I didn't take it serious," Facciponte said. "As an independent operator, it's a lot of money."

But Rodriguez believed the investment was worth it.

The restaurant - at 9,000 square feet - is the largest of the Guadalajara chain. It needed to be upscale enough to work in Town Center, Rodriguez said, but familiar enough to appeal to the local community.

When it opens later this month, Rodriguez thinks it will do just that. And the handiwork of Facciponte and his two-man crew will be a main reason why.

"They're artists," said Stan Belson, who handles public relations for Rodriguez. "I can't call them anything else."