A new restaurant and bar has opened up at Memorial Marketplace.
One Eyed Jack officially opened its doors on Monday, marking the latest business to open at the redeveloped lands that hosted the former Memorial Arena.
“It is very overwhelming,” Chris Thavarajah, operations manager at One Eyed Jack, tells Quinte News on the response to the grand opening.
“We had a lot of runout and a lot of support from community leaders and organizations, and from officials and neighbouring patrons, everybody came in.”
One Eyed Jack is a chain restaurant with eight locations across Southern and Eastern Ontario, including the new location in Belleville.
Thavarajah spoke on the location and what appealed to them about the area.
“We’ve seen the transition that (Task Force Engineering) did there and what we’ve seen transpire. That kind of inspired us, and (Hilary Murphy) was upholding the historical roots of Belleville, and we can tell that that is going to be an iconic part of the community and the history of Belleville, and we wanted to be part of that,” Thavarajah tells Quinte News.
He spoke highly on working with Hilary Murphy of Task Force Engineering on the transition to the new location, calling it “seamless.”
“It’s one of the easiest store openings I think we have done compared to our other locations,” Thavarajah said.
“They have a really good construction background, the space was already ready for this when we started, and it only took us a couple of months to do our work.”
Thavarajah says that the restaurant is now looking at ways to integrate itself into the community.
“Our focus will be to be more collaborative with other organizations, sports teams, corporate events, and all that,” Thavarajah explained to Quinte News.
“We sponsor sports teams too. I spoke to a couple of them today, so you know, I’m looking for a very collaborative effort going forward.”
