Former mobster behind effort to bring country music restaurants to the Treasure Valley
The owners of a Downtown Boise property where a never-completed Rascal Flatts restaurant was supposed to go were shocked to learn that a former Mafia soldier called the shots for the project.
The Arizona Republic newspaper in Phoenix reported last week that a man supposedly named Frank Capri was a hidden partner whose name was never disclosed in documents for the Boise restaurant or other Rascal Flatts projects, which also failed. Capri was actually Frank Gioia Jr., once a “made man” in New York City’s Lucchese crime family, the Republic reported.
Gardner Co., which owns the restaurant space in the Grove Plaza, off South Capitol Boulevard, lost about $70,000 on the Rascal Flatts project, said David Wali, Gardner’s executive vice president, in a phone interview with the Idaho Statesman.
Wali said he didn’t learn about Capri’s behind-the-scenes involvement until last summer, about the time the project fell apart.
“The world is full of scammers,” Wali said. “Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail.”
He said his company’s loss could have been much worse had the project continued. But with 22 million square feet of property owned by Gardner Co., the 6,412 square feet in that space represents only a small portion of Gardner’s holdings, he said.
Gardner is a major Downtown developer and property owner. It built the Eighth & Main building that opened in 2014, bought the U.S. Bank building in 2013, and built the City Center Plaza (a building adjoining the Grove Plaza) in 2016. The Rascal Flatts restaurant would have gone in a vacant, ground-level City Center Plaza space at 151 S. Capitol Blvd.
“I want reasons for people to come and stay and be Downtown,” Wali said. “Music is a great way to do it. It just didn’t work out.”
And Gardner wasn’t the only Treasure Valley company victimized by Capri. The company that owns The Village at Meridian was, too.
Capri, it turns out, was involved in a second failed restaurant chain that also banked on the name of a popular country singer: Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill. That chain was scheduled to open a restaurant at The Village at Meridian in 2014.
But The Village evicted the company.
“Fortunately they had not opened, so people didn’t lose their jobs,” Hugh Crawford, general manager at The Village, said by phone. “They were probably 90 percent complete with construction, so we had to undo all that and then release the space to H&M [a clothing store] pretty quickly.”
Crawford declined to provide additional details, saying the matter is still tied up in litigation. CenterCal, the shopping center’s owner, obtained the eviction order and a $1,308 default judgment against CRGE Boise, the company that was to operate the restaurant. Capri associate Debbie Corvo was listed as a member on the company’s business registration at the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office. It listed an address in Phoenix used by Capri in Arizona business filings.
The money has not been paid, according to Ada County District Court records.
Capri’s company opened 20 Toby Keith restaurants and announced plans for 20 more. By 2015, all but one had closed.
‘One big scam against everybody’
The Rascal Flatts project in Boise fell apart last August, when Ray Roshto, owner of Ussher Construction in Glendale, Arizona, sent a two-sentence letter to the city of Boise asking the Building Division to cancel the construction permit.
Capri hired Roshto in 2017 to develop Rascal Flatts restaurants in Boise, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, St. Louis and for a different restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. Roshto told the Idaho Statesman that Capri told him to keep Capri’s name off contracts and that he would be paid through RF Investments, a company based in Las Vegas.
Only five months before Roshto sent his letter, RF Restaurants, a separate entity, filed for a permit to build the Boise restaurant. Christian Burka and Tawny L. Costa, Capri’s girlfriend, are listed as managers of the company, according to filings with the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office.
The Republic reported that Burka and Costa fronted the restaurants. Capri worked behind the scenes, collecting development fees, overseeing construction schedules, obtaining permits, hiring, firing, and arranging employee payments.
Roshto told the Statesman that it became clear quickly that Capri had no interest in building the restaurants. Only one Rascal Flatts restaurant opened, in Stamford, Connecticut. It was open about a year before closing last August.
The final straw came, Roshto told the Statesman, when he learned RF Restaurants had used his license to begin jobs in Florida, where he was not licensed. He asked that all construction permits associated with his company be revoked.
“As things turned out, it was just one big scam against everybody by Frank Capri, Tawny Costa, Chris Burka and RF Investments,” Roshto said in a telephone interview.
Roshto said Capri still owes him about $90,000, and he has incurred tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and other expenses in trying to sort things out.
“I’m almost out of business because of this,” he said.
Rascal Flatts tweets news to fans
Burka, who previously worked with Costa at Phoenix area restaurants and who was listed as the applicant for the Boise project, did not return a Statesman call for comment. He told the Arizona Republic that Costa handled all of the business and financial operations for the company.
Costa told the Republic that she had no ownership in the Rascal Flatts projects. Her attorney, Shawn Richter of Scottsdale, told the Republic that Costa was not an owner of RF Restaurants, but he declined to say who was.
The Statesman could not locate phone numbers for Capri, Costa and RF Investments.
In January, the band Rascal Flatts tweeted that the restaurant concept had fizzled. The band said it had no ownership in the project and had only licensed the use of its name by RF Restaurants.
“We ended the agreement and do not have a business relationship with the developer,” the tweet said. “They are not authorized to use our name in any way.”
Next in Boise: An Italian restaurant?
Gioia, 51, a third-generation mobster, has a long criminal history, the Republic reported. By age 12, he was stealing cars, committing robberies, loansharking and bookmaking. At age 18, he shot a club bouncer in the leg after the man disrespected a Mafia associate. Gioia held a man down in 1992 while his cousin fatally shot the man, who had disrespected the cousin’s girlfriend, in the face.
After he heard the mob was planning to kill his father, also a gangster, Gioia in 1995 agreed to provide information in exchange for getting placed into the federal Witness Protection Program, the Republic reported. Two years later, Gioia supplied authorities with information on six unsolved murders committed by his fiancee’s brother and associates.
Back at The Grove Plaza, Wali said he is negotiating with a San Diego company to open an Italian restaurant in the space formerly reserved for Rascal Flatts.
“We expect this will be a success,” he said.
This story was originally published March 20, 2019 at 5:09 PM.
