Rocco's Little Chicago has been a neighborhood mainstay for 25 years. In 2020, major road construction began at their front door along Broadway. In weeks, they were hit by the pandemic. This is how they survived.
Ellice Lueders Anthony “Rocco” DiGrazia doesn’t remember how long the construction project on Broadway lasted. The street was being widened at the doorstep of his beloved, decades-old pizza establishment, Rocco’s Little Chicago.The expansion of Broadway had been approved by voters in 2011. For years leading up to the project, the city sought feedback from stakeholders and community members.
Rocco was expecting the construction to be disruptive — and it was. “I was planning on a 20% contraction of business,” he said. He posted photos on social media of maps for customers to navigate the dirt frontage road that bypassed the construction. “The PPP loans kept me afloat,” Rocco said. “Rio Nuevo gave me some cash, the Sunshine Mile Project. All of this kept me afloat, but my workers kept coming to work and the customers kept coming for pizza. The customers helped us survive.”
“But no free-standing structures had anybody open the whole time. Various places are closed. There was a radio station on Broadway, a Hispanic station ... It’s hard to tell what was due to the road widening and what was due to the pandemic,” Rocco said. When COVID fractured us into our germ pods and home offices, Rocco’s persisted as a connecting point, remembering its regulars of the community they love.
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