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 home » media » Desert Living - Issue 55 | July/Aug 2006
The StoryIt wasn't exactly slow to start. Sure, it took Lisa Giungo a few months to get the liquor license for her Lisa G Cafe Wine Bar, and it may have taken some time for Vine Saccento to decide how to decorate a back corner of his coffee lounge, Drip, but as the old buildings on the corner of 7th Street and Sheridan in Phoenix, AZ, began to experience new life within, the smell of urban renewal filled the air and it was practically instant. Hair stylist Salvador Calvano and his son, Sal Jr., had been running a salon near the corner for years, but when the 1930s red brick bungalow that housed the popular Ye Ol Sandwich Shoppe went up for sale, Sal Sr. snatched up the structure, along with a multi-storefront building along 7th Street and a little white house next to the bungalow. Friends told him to put his money in a condo development or something in Scottsdale, but native Chicagoan Sal Sr. believes in the power of a strong downtown. As fate would have it, these buildings quickly attracted a cast of tenants that made this corner more than a sound investment for Sal, it made this corner a symbol of what downtown Phoenix should be – a collection of small, independently owned businesses that being flair and diversity to the neighborhoods around them. Sal erected a sign and dubbed the corner Sheridan Square. Within it is Drip Coffee Lounge, Trente-Cinq (35) Belgian Bistro, 7th Street Guitar Shop, and Lisa G Café Wine Bar. Behind all of that, another creative enterprise is now complete. Architect Hayes McNeil has has designed a modern duplex with former business partner, Amber Dennison, that expressed his clean, efficient style of design while blending with the surrounding Tudor- and Bungalow-style homes of the Coronado Historic District. What follows is a glimpse into each of these spaces. And that little white house between Lisa G and the duplex? Dennison has a clothing boutique planned for that space. So, this urban story is apparently far from over.
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