Here’s a number that should make every Mount Pleasant restaurateur flinch: $16,000 a month. That’s what Davide Davino was told his rent would become at Cuoco Pazzo Trattoria, the Italian spot he’s run for more than 17 years in the Fairmount Shopping Center. His current rent? $4,800. So, a triple.
The math arrived after locally based RCB Development bought the retail property and neighboring Anna Knapp Plaza last May for $15 million. New owner, new rent roll, new reality. Several neighbors have already scattered: Molly Maid bolted to Goose Creek, SpinJen Productions relocated elsewhere in town. Moving in behind them: Caviar & Bananas, Degree Wellness and Arrow Quality Cuts and Shaves.
For a while, Davino, a native of Naples, thought the story ended with a shuttered trattoria. “There’s a lot of empty restaurants, but everybody is a similar price. … So, it’s way too high to just open a door,” he told the Post and Courier.
Instead, the door swings open a few miles up Highway 17. Cuoco Pazzo, which translates to “crazy chef,” is heading to 1181 Oakland Market Road, into the Market at Oakland shopping center near the Walmart on the north end of town. The new rent lands at just over $12,600 a month, which is still a hike but a survivable one. And it comes with extras the old space couldn’t offer: a bigger kitchen and a larger patio under a cover Davino can’t stop describing.
“It’s more traffic and more people walking,” he said. “It’s a nice building. It’s beautiful. We have a beautiful patio cover. So I’m very excited to open this new restaurant over here in Oakland. I love it.”
He’s not just changing zip codes. The new footprint fits both the pizzeria and the fine-dining operation under one roof, which means lunch is finally on the table: personal-pan pizzas, pasta, salads and sandwiches for the midday crowd.
The timeline is tight and tidy. Cuoco Pazzo stays put at Fairmount until July 31, when the lease runs out. The new spot up the road is expected to open as soon as the next day.
There’s a tidy little Charleston parable buried in here. A $15 million sale resets the rent, the rent reroutes a 17-year institution, and a neighborhood loses a fixture while another gains one. Multiply that by every shopping center changing hands in the Lowcountry right now and you start to see the churn that doesn’t make headlines. Davino got out ahead of it. Plenty won’t.
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