Restaurant new to Macon heading to Mercer Landing

A restaurant new to Macon is planning to open this fall in Mercer Landing, a mixed-use development located across from Mercer University’s Five Star Stadium.

Amici, which means “friends” in Italian, will be a nearly 6,000-square-foot restaurant. It will join Papa John’s Pizza and Momma Goldberg’s Deli, which have already opened in the development.

The franchisee owners, Jonathan “Bob” Ewing and Jon Joiner, had been looking at putting a restaurant in Macon and the Madison-based franchisor had some interest in it, Ewing said. The men also own the Amici restaurants in Milledgeville and at Lake Oconee.

“We feel Macon is obviously in a growth spurt right now and it’s a good time to definitely get in,” he said. “And as anybody in business says, location is very key, and the location that Jim (Daws) came to us with is a very prime location and it was hard to turn him down. We think that being that close to the college, and all the sports that are right there … it will be a win-win for the university, for us and obviously for Jim.”

Jim Daws, president of Macon-based Sierra Development Group, developed Mercer Landing.

“This will be a great addition to Mercer and Macon,” he said in an email.

The restaurant will have “what I believe will be the first ‘true’ rooftop bar in Middle Georgia,” he said. The rooftop bar will be about 1,600 square feet.

The restaurant’s menu will include pizza, wings, soup, salads, pasta and sandwiches.

“This will be the first free-standing Amici and the first built from the ground up,” Ewing said. The other restaurants are either in a downtown location or in shopping centers.

The owners expect to hire at least 40 people for the restaurant, he said. Plans are now to be open for lunch and dinner with later hours for the bar on weekends, he said. It may provide live music.

“We are shooting to open Aug. 1 because Mercer opens (to students) Aug. 22,” he said. “So we are trying to get a couple of weeks under our belt and be ready for move-in at Mercer.

“Our franchisor is extremely excited just because of the reach of people that it is, hopefully, going to reach,” Ewing said. “They have not thought about going south of Milledgeville, ... but this will spread the Amici love further south in Georgia.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2017 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Restaurant new to Macon heading to Mercer Landing."