An upscale sushi restaurant will debut this weekend in downtown Colorado Springs — the latest concept from a restaurateur who’s also brought Mexican fare and pizza to the city’s central business district.

Sushi Row will open at 5 p.m. Saturday at 316 N. Tejon St. in the former YMCA office building and is part of a larger mixed-use redevelopment project at the site, which includes a second restaurant and offices — though a luxury condominium component has been put on hold.

Jason Wallenta, co-owner of downtown’s Dos Santos Tacos, White Pie Pizzeria and Mexican restaurant Dos Dos, and his wife, Riley O’Brien, have launched Sushi Row under Row House Hospitality, a company they formed two years ago.

Wallenta and his brother, Kris, opened Dos Santos Tacos in Denver in 2015, and expanded the brand to Colorado Springs three years later with a location on South Tejon Street. They opened White Pie Pizzeria in 2021 on South Nevada Avenue and Dos Dos — a Dos Santos spinoff — in December on North Tejon.

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Kris, however, isn’t involved in Sushi Row, Jason Wallenta said.

The Sushi Row concept has been a “passion project” for Wallenta and his wife for years, he said; they’d frequently go for sushi at lunch when they began dating.

“It was just kind of our thing,” Wallenta said.

When Dos Santos Tacos opened in Colorado Springs, Wallenta and O’Brien moved to town from the Denver area, but felt local sushi choices “were limited,” he said.

“There wasn’t that many high-end options for the cuisine that we were looking for,” he said.

Since then, Wallenta and O’Brien have envisioned a sushi concept of their own.

“There’s no sushi that is, like, interesting,” Wallenta said. “We just wanted something closer to Sushi Den (a high-end Denver restaurant). We wanted something like elevated sushi.”

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Their vision included a three-year recruitment of Batzaya “Zaya” Altbish, the chef of their favorite sushi restaurant in Denver, to partner with them. Altbish now has moved to the Springs with his family to help oversee Sushi Row, Wallenta said.

Sushi Row will have fish flown in weekly and serve traditional sushi, but “with some innovations and our personal touches,” Wallenta said. The menu will include nigiri and sashimi rolls, veggie and custom rolls, West Coast Kumamoto oysters and even caviar in the next few weeks, he said. The bar also will feature champagne, house cocktails and saké.

The restaurant will occupy about 2,300 square feet on the north side of the former YMCA building, and have a 700-square-foot patio out front. Its kitchen opens up to the dining room, which has been designed with walnut slab tables and incorporates exposed brick on walls and columns.

Sushi Row — which will join several dining, drinking and dessert options in the 300 block of North Tejon — will be a big step up from the sushi restaurants that Colorado Springs diners have seen in town, predicted local developer Joe Niebur. He and partner Ray Thomas of Thomas General Contractors in Colorado Springs remodeled the former YMCA building, a Mediterranean-style structure constructed in 1956 and known for its tile roof, arched windows and courtyard.

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Thomas also was the general contractor, though not a partner, on Niebur’s redevelopment of a South Tejon building where a more than century-old former trolley car barn was transformed into a hub for restaurants and entertainment uses, including Dos Santos Tacos.

“We definitely spent some money,” Niebur said of the YMCA building. “If I’m going to do something, I want to do it cool. There’s plenty of average. We need new things (that are) top end here. We’ve got to set a new standard here in town. The sushi place is definitely going to be above anything else in town as far as quality of food and quality of experience.”

A hospitality company that operates the Denver-area La Loma and Sierra restaurants has signed a lease to take over the remaining 7,500 square feet of the former YMCA building’s first floor, along with a 1,500-square-foot patio, where it will open a new restaurant concept this year, Niebur said.

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A local office of national commercial brokerage Capstone Cos., meanwhile, has moved into the building’s 3,000-square-foot second floor, Niebur said.

His plans for a multi-story condominium building to be constructed behind the YMCA building, however, have been shelved — though not abandoned, Niebur said. Higher construction costs and interest rates have made it too costly to go ahead with the project at this time, he said. He originally envisioned condos selling for upward of $1 million.

“We’re going to price it again and see what it does,” Niebur said.