Laura Feliciano was scouting locations for a new restaurant in the Puerto Rican capital when she discovered she was priced out of the upscale waterfront districts that were her first choice. Instead, she set up several blocks inland on a grungy street lined with discount stores and pawn shops.
Feliciano named her new restaurant and bar “Pa’l Cielo,” a Puerto Rican saying that translates as “To Heaven,” but she was far from it in the Santurce neighborhood. Prostitutes and drug dealers hissed to prospective customers from darkened corners, and diners insisted on being escorted back to their cars, sometimes to find their vehicles had been broken into.
