Rudy’s on the heap

With a new owner, the Cape landmark may be torn down, with a new restaurant built in its place.

Rudy’s on the Cape, a Cape Elizabeth landmark on Ocean
House Road for nearly 50 years, could come down later
this fall to make way for a new restaurant to be built in
its place.

CAPE ELIZABETH — A new, 80-seat restaurant may replace a Cape Elizabeth landmark, Rudy’s on the Cape.

Chuck Barnes, who has run the combination convenience store and 15-seat diner since 2008, said his lease expires at the end of the month. He had an option to buy the business and building, he said, and offered owner Mary Page $320,000, but she wouldn’t have it.

The property is assessed by the town at $338,600.

Instead, the local landmark on Ocean House Drive, near the entrance to Two Lights Road, sold July 7 to Paul Woods, of Running Tide Road. At a Sept. 6 Planning Board workshop, landscape architect Pat Carroll, of Portland-based Carroll and Associates, told a group of 20 abutting landowners and other interested parties that Woods plans to demolish Rudy’s and put up a new, 80-seat restaurant in its place.

Woods, principal of Isis Development, which owns a vacant, 1-acre lot next to the town office, is best known as the owner of the so-called “secret beach” near Broad Cove, at the center of a shorefront access fight that erupted six years ago.

Asked if the new Rudy’s would retain its traditional convenience store aspect, Carroll told the board, “No, I think you’ll see that go away.”

Rudy’s opened in the late 1950s as the Bagley Grocery Store. Rudy Gagnon took it over in 1963 and ran it as a convenience store/lunch counter for 30 years. After a succession of owners, Page bought it in 2003 and leased the business to Barnes in October 2008. 

Almost from the onset, Barnes has waged a war on four fronts, which, he said, accounts for his battle-weary demeanor.

Just before he took over the eatery, Page tried to get a license to serve beer and wine on premises. That effort ultimately was successful, but not without incurring a fair amount of acrimony from neighbors.

"We are concerned about the inevitable noisy, rowdy and sometimes dangerous late-night behavior of inebriated patrons,” wrote neighbor Morris Kreitz, to the Planning Board, at that time.

“No Cape Elizabeth neighborhood ought ever be mistaken for Old Port's Fore Street,” he said.

Not long after Barnes came on scene, the ongoing fight with abutters resulted in the creation of a new “BA” business zone, set in two tiny districts centered on Rudy’s and another business at 553 Shore Road. As part of the change, Rudy’s had to close by 9 p.m.

“Here I’ve got 40 people in here on a Friday night and I’m making money – I’m actually making money – and I’ve got to throw people out at 9,” said Barnes on Monday.

“The games are not even over by then,” he said, pointing to a flat-screen TV hung on a wall at the end of the bar. “I’ve had to take whatever I make during the summer and set it aside, because I lose $15,000 a month in the winter.”

The zoning rules did not quiet neighbors, though. Although town officials credit Barnes with mitigating much of the initial fears over issuance of a liquor license, some abutters continued to balk.

“I’ve got one lady over there,” said Barnes, waving to a house across the road, “if a car so much as beeps its horn in the parking lot, she calls the cops.”

Meanwhile, Barnes said, he and Page have had problems. “We had a big to-do about pipes that froze the first winter,” he said. “I put $10,000 into fixing stuff myself my first year.”

He said the half-century-old walk-in cooler costs him $200 a month in repairs to keep running.

“I made my offer on the business,” said Barnes. “This building isn’t worth anything. It’s so run down.”

Chuck Barnes, proprietor of Rudy’s on the Cape
for the past three years, was unable to come to
terms with owner Mary Page on his option to buy
the local landmark. It sold instead to Cape resident
Paul Woods, who plans to demo the building
and put up a new restaurant in its place. Barnes
is now “pursuing other opportunities.”

Neither Woods nor Page could be reached for comment. Carroll declined to answer any questions on Friday, and did not return calls Monday or Tuesday,

Barnes got started in the restaurant business by washing dishes in his native Waterville. Later he worked as a sous chef in Connecticut, as a chef at Harbor Park on the Connecticut River and as a food and beverage manager at a Holiday Inn. He returned to Maine with his wife, Julie, in 1999 and became food and beverage manager at the Purpoodock Club.

Even as he prepares to lock the doors on Rudy’s for the last time, he exudes pride in his work there, puffing to life as he discusses the menu he developed there.

It took some time, taking over mid-recession, but people finally turned on to what Barnes offered, he said. After ending his first five months $30,000 in debt, things began to turn around, despite continuing confusion, from locals and tourists alike, over whether Rudy’s was a convenience store, a sandwich shop, a restaurant or a bar. Thanks in part to its grandfathered lack of a site plan review, it’s a little of everything.

“I just want to thank everyone for their support,” said Barnes, “because this is a tough business. There’s food costs, and gas costs and CMP, and then you turn around and there’s an insurance bill due. It’s so hard to run a business like this.

“Without the people coming in all the time, and supporting me, and just constantly boosting me up by just thanking me for being here, I couldn’t have done as well as I did,” said Barnes.

After a farewell thank-you to locals Sept. 24-25, Barnes will have until the end of the month to clean up and clear out. Then it’s five days on Monhegan to rest up for whatever life has in store next.

“I’m beat,” he said. “I’ve been having leg problems, from being on my feet 14 hours a day, seven days a week. … There’s just been so much pressure here. I can’t wait to get away.

Barnes has “about a dozen” employees and is unsure what will happen to them when he leaves.

“This guy [Woods] said he’s bought the business, but he hasn’t bought anything from me,” Barnes said. “I’m the business. All I know is that he’s got the equipment when I go.”

Rudy’s has an existing site plan approval from 2008, for site improvements and expansion. However, Carroll said at last week’s hearing that the plan is to forego that in favor of an undertaking a new site plan.

Maureen O’Meara, the town planner, said Friday she expects to have an application in hand in time for the Planning Board’s Oct. 18 meeting. Carroll said during the workshop that rehabilitation of Rudy’s parking lot (built to 33 spaces) could take place this fall, as soon as approvals are in place.

After that, a new 1 ½-story building, which Carroll said will evoke the look of a “contemporary seaside cottage,” will be built on the north side of the existing building, closer to neighbors, but still within the 100-foot setback established in the 2009 zoning change. The restaurant, compared more than once by Carroll to the nearby Good Table restaurant, is expected to have 80 seats, 56 inside and the rest on an enclosed porch. Once the new building is up, the current one will come down, said Carroll.

Few objections were raised at the hearing, while several Planning Board members called Carroll’s presentation a “vast improvement” over the state of the lot.

At least one neighbor agreed.

“I believe the scheme as presented at the Sept. 6 workshop is a significant and welcome improvement over previous proposals for the site,” wrote Kreitz, in an email to the town that called Rudy’s “tired and shabby” as it stands.

Barnes, meanwhile, is focused on his big blow-out.

“On my last day, I’m not going to be able to get everybody out by 9 o’clock. I know it,” he said, with a wide grin.

But then he paused.

“No,” he said. “Better make sure you tell them, everybody’s got to be out of here by 9.”