Nuovo Cappetto suddenly shuts down; owner says trolley construction cut business 55 percent

The owner of Nuovo Cappetto has suddenly shut down the Italian restaurant located at 2711 North Stanton Street in West El Paso.

Owner Edward Davis said business is down 55 percent, thanks to the trolley construction happening along Stanton Street.

“It’s just a matter of access. Right now, if you are coming down Stanton, you are looking at an earth mover, another earth mover. It’s like a big sign saying, ‘Go away’,” Davis said.

The trolley construction in front of Nuovo Capetto began in January and is expected to be completed by late April. Traffic along the busy El Paso roadway is squeezed to one lane — in one direction.

The El Paso Streetcar Project is being spearheaded by the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority. It will be a 4.8-mile looping route that will connect the Downtown area to the University of Texas at El Paso. An inner circulator loop will stay Downtown, according to the city’s “Development News.”

Martin Bartlett works for Barracuda Public Relations, the firm representing the Streetcar Project.

“That stretch of work was actually scheduled to take place between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And so, they (businesses) said pretty quickly, ‘Please don’t do it then. Find another time.’ So, what we did is go back to the drawing board, worked with the contractor and rescheduled that work to start shortly after the first of the year,” Bartlett said.

The City did hold public meetings and went door to door informing business owners and residents the construction was headed their way.

“I thought about doing what Charcoaler did, and say we’re going out of business. But how would people get down here to come in? So, it’s tough,” Davis said.

Davis said he was not able to give his employees advance notice of the closure, but believes they, like him, could see the writing on the wall.

“It’s tough in this business to do advance notice, because you never know from one day to the next what somebody is going to do. There are a thousand restaurants in El Paso,” Davis said.

This is the second time Davis has suddenly shut down a Cappetto restaurant.

Davis shut down the orIginal Cappetto’s Italian Restaurant at 2716 Montana back in 2012.

Employees told ABC 7 they did not know the restaurant was closing.

Instead, they arrived to work to find a note on the door explaining the closure.

But Davis said, he may not be closing Nuovo Cappetto for good. He plans to monitor the Streetcar construction over the next few months.

He had a message for his customers.

“We’ll be back, somewhere, somehow, sometime,” Davis said.