Spaced Out: Cuisine art

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In November of last year, Mital Naik got a letter from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Independence Boulevard was going to be widened, and his restaurant, Brazas Brazillian Grill, at Independence and Sharon Amity Road, was in the path of a planned exit ramp.

Suddenly a victim of progress, Naik now had to find a new home.

A year later, Brazas at 4508 E. Independence is no more, but construction crews are wrapping up a renovation at 500 S. College St., where Naik is opening his latest eatery.

Brazz, as it’s called, is in a portion of the first floor of the three-story building adjacent to the Uptown park known as The Green. The space used to house Jolina, a Tex-Mex restaurant.

Naik picked AI Design Group to redesign the interior. Conveniently, AI’s headquarters are on the floor above, and on an afternoon this month the banging from the renovation below came barging into AI’s conference room.

AI, which takes up the entire second floor, was launched in January 2003. It has roughly 20 employees and is licensed to work in 27 states but is hoping to make it 28.

Although it’s been nice for AI’s architects to take the elevator down to the restaurant and keep tabs on progress, the project hasn’t been a complete breeze.

Whereas Brazas was about 10,000 square feet, Brazz is only 3,500. With that much shrinkage, getting everything to fit — the buffet area, the kitchen, seating for about 75 — was just plain tough, said Ron Culpepper, a senior associate for AI who managed the project.

It was like “going from a Winnebago to a Volkswagon Microbus,” he said. “A little bit of submarine design, tightened up a lot of spaces.”

Take the bar: Culpepper said it’s about as compressed as compressed can be.

Still, he’s quick to point out that the restaurant doesn’t feel cramped to him.

“There’s really very segmented spaces in here, but it does flow,” he said. “From a design standpoint, that’s something we’re pleased with.”

Naik said the upfit is a $250,000 job, although he wouldn’t say how much of that has gone to AI.

AI’s Elizabeth Hamilton was project designer. Culpepper said the menu inspired the look.

“We kind of played off the idea of how they cooked the food,” he said. “It’s basically all flame-broiled.”

It’s no surprise, then, that the walls have been painted warm colors.

On Dec. 2, different types of light fixtures were hanging above the bar, installed to help determine which one looked the best.

Kim Marks, an AI principal who finds leads for the company, said Naik has been open-minded about the design.

“He didn’t come to the table with a preconceived notion,” she said. “He wanted a big change.”

Among those changes: Over the buffet area, a ribbed structure has been suspended from the ceiling.

Everyone involved in the project is biting their nails as inspectors have yet to walk through the space before awarding it a precious occupancy permit.

Naik said his hope is to open Brazz this month.

AI has done prominent projects in the Charlotte area, such as the Sonic Automotive headquarters in Cotswold. That project was finished in July. The company is also involved in the upfitting of adult-education centers, such as for ITT Technical Institute, Strayer University and University of Phoenix. It’s also doing work for AAA on new centers and renovations.

But when it came to landing the Brazz job, its place in the phone book — thanks to that “A” in AI — played a role, at least according to Marks.

“I think Mital called here,” she said. “I think he was going through the Yellow Pages, and I think he went down and we’re one of the first ones.”

Spaced Out spotlights interior design work of Charlotte-area architecture firms. Email ideas to [email protected].

Roberts can be reached at [email protected].