Update: The bar will open Thursday, June 19, according to a co-owner’s Facebook page.
More than thirty beers on tap. Giant flat-screen televisions wherever the eye wanders. An open-air roof bar.
Those are just a handful of the features the new owners of a popular downtown Shelton bar hope will draw nearby residents to the business when it reopens.
The owners are still doing renovation work, so there was no opening date as of this week.
Formerly Danny O’s Downtown, the 19th-century, two-story bar at 441 Howe Ave. has been retitled “Bricks and Barley” by new owners Chris Jones, Tim Connors, and Al Ciraldo.
Jones, a Shelton resident and volunteer firefighter, took the Valley Indy on a brief tour of the business a few weeks back as he and his partners worked on a floor-to-ceiling renovation of the roughly 5,000-square-foot space.
The business was formerly owned by brothers Danny (as in Danny O’s) and Dave Orazietti, whose limited liability company still own the building.
The bar’s new owners have first right of refusal if the building is sold, Jones said.
The three new owners are longtime friends who have always wanted to run a bar together.
“We’ve known each other for years and we’ve been trying to find the right place to buy,” he said.
That opportunity came along in March, Jones said, when they convinced the Oraziettis to sell.
“It was the right place at the right time,” he said.
Since then, they’ve been working on revamping the space to attract the hundreds of new residents that have moved downtown in recent years with the construction of Avalon Shelton and the Birmingham condominiums, with more residential projects in the pipeline.
“There are 400 units of apartments we need to get over here,” Jones said. “We want to embrace downtown and kind of make it a destination.”
A Facebook page and website are also in the works.
New features at the business will include a massive display of four 60-inch televisions that will be the first thing patrons see when walking in the front door.
The screens will be able to display four different events or converge to form one huge picture that’s 6 feet across.
The new owners will also emphasize a diverse beer selection — they ordered a custom-made 10-foot copper “tap tower” with 30 different beers on offer for the bar’s main room.
“We’re going to have the most taps around,” Jones said. “Nobody’s going to have more taps than us in the Valley.”
They also hope to offer local food products on the menu, from businesses like Liquid Lunch, Oronoque Farms, and Stockbridge’s Gourmet Cheesecakes, to name a few.
The owners have been encouraged as their work on the renovation nears completion.
“I’m getting excited now,” Jones said. “Things are getting done every day.”
