WARREN AND MARISSA TAYLOR, with scissors, celebrate a ribbon-cutting for the official opening of their new restaurant, Fanaticus Sports Grill.
The sports-themed family restaurant is located at 1026 E. First St. in Port Angeles.
The Taylors are pictured with Edna Petersen, the building’s owner; chef Abel Garcia, bartender Brian Lyster and the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors, all in red.
A Port Angeles native, Warren Taylor, owner of Taylor Made Construction LLC and a former waiter at Port Angeles’ upscale C’est Si Bon restaurant, and his wife, Marissa, a respiratory therapist, spent months transforming the building (it’s about 7,500-square-feet) into a family restaurant and haven for sports fanatics — hence the name Fanaticus, Latin for “fanatic” or, in its shortened form, “fan.”
“My main purpose for doing this is? I felt there was a gap in the community for family dining and sports viewing,” said Warren in an interview last March with the Peninsula Daily News.
The Taylors poured more than $500,000 into renovations of the building, constructed as a shipping warehouse in the mid-1940s.
It has about 30 employees.
Televisions adorn the walls, anchored by two 180-inch projector screens and a 19-foot barrel-vault ceiling.
Recycled tongue-and-groove flooring covers the ceiling and softens the height.
Warren designed the interior, which has a 140-seat dining room and bar seating for between 40 and 50.
Taking center stage as patrons walk through the 8-foot front doors is an igloo-shaped, gas-fired, brick pizza oven that can cook a half-dozen pizzas in 2½ minutes.
The Taylors are leasing-to-buy from Petersen.
Petersen also owns the Necessities & Temptations downtown gift shop and is president of the Port Angeles Business Association.
Her Sea Ridge Realty business had been in the building along with offices housing Apria Healthcare and, at one time, the state Department of Motor Vehicles office.
It’s where Warren obtained his driver’s license when he was 16.
