A bar and a new home for food trucks is coming to 11th Street and Main Avenue this summer.
Jaime Wisner and his son, Marcos, are remodeling the former home of the Durango Downtown Smoke Shop to look as it did in the 1950s when it was a gas station. Plenty of gas station memorabilia will be incorporated into the bar.
“We’ll have a lot of urban art,” Jaime Wisner said.
The building will be home to Ernie’s, a bar, named after the owner of the gas station.
He expects to build the bar itself from an old bowling alley lane and incorporate the front of a 1957 Chevy into it as well.
Outside there will be room for five food trucks and two food carts. An outdoor stage and shaded outdoor seating also are planned. The entire corner will be dubbed the Eleventh Street Station.
The idea was inspired in part by Marcos Wisner’s food truck The Box, which operated on the site in 2015.
“The intention is to provide a space for both established and new chefs to create excellent food,” a news release said.
Some chefs may bring their own trucks and others may be rented, Jaime Wisner said.
Before opening The Box, Marcos Wisner trained as a sushi chef at the California Sushi Academy and worked at Masa, a sushi restaurant in New York City. He also worked at two French restaurants, Jean-Georges and Eleven Madison Park in New York City.
Jaime Wisner bought the property in 1988 to house his business Discovery Travel.
He sold the travel agency in 2005, and the building sat vacant for some time before the now-closed smoke shop moved in.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
