Patton’s on Main closes

Restaurant co-owner Carrie Robertson announced Monday that chef and partner Pat Robertson was hired by the Wolfgang Puck Corp. to open a new restaurant in Dallas’ Reunion Tower. 

This will be the third new restaurant opened by Robertson, and his second under Puck. 

“I’m afraid we don’t have a way to keep the restaurant here open with Pat in Dallas for the foreseeable future,” Carrie Robertson said in a prepared statement. “Personally, we will have some challenges, but this was an opportunity we just could not pass up.”   

She will remain in the Highland Lakes with the couple’s children and continue working as the sales and marketing manager at Imagine Solutions.

According to the restaurant’s Web site, Patton Robertson began working in the restaurant industry at 14, landing his first job at The Boardwalk Restaurant in the resort community of Horseshoe Bay, which is where he lived.  He graduated from Marble Falls High School in 1988 and attended the University of Mississippi. He majored in hotel and restaurant management, and was chef and kitchen manager at the City Grocery in Oxford, Miss. 

In 1995, Patton enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in London, the Web site said. He later joined the kitchen staff of Wolfgang Puck’s Spago Restaurant in Las Vegas before returning to the Highland Lakes, where his restaurant on Main Street gained fame for its beef-tenderloin tacos and shrimp-and-grits signature dish.

The Nov. 8 closing of Patton’s marks the demise of the fourth downtown dining establishment in a span of just five months. Patton’s closing also means that 3,200 square feet will be added to a growing amount of empty commercial storefront that was previously occupied by restaurants. 

The rapid succession of closings in the vicinity of historic Main Street have many wondering about the future of the downtown area.

Cafe 909, a fine-dining bistro previously located on Second Street, went out of business Oct. 31, preceded by Cecil & Co. Steaks and Seafood, a restaurant  just a block down Main Street, that closed in mid-September.  

Prior to that, the Falls Bistro & Wine Cellar at Second and Main closed their doors in June.

 “People have some valid concerns about downtown, being that it is the center of the city itself and a big part of the tourism industry for the community,” said Christian Fletcher, executive director of the Marble Falls/Lake LBJ Chamber of Commerce.  “We have a lot of resources in outlying areas, but in Marble Falls proper, the downtown area is a huge resource. It’s going through a transition now, and we are going to do everything that we can to help, but it is going to be challenge.”

Russell Buster, owner of several downtown commercial properties including The Uptown Marble Theater and R-Bar & Gril in downtown Marble Falls, acknowledged this has been a challenging period for many restauranteurs.  

He said the flood of June 2007, which caused millions of dollars in damage when storms dumped 19 inches of rain on the area, had a tremendous negative impact on the area’s economy.

“It’s just been hard to get a handle on it.  When we had the flood of `07, it knocked everybody down, and most were only partially recovered when the economy starting having trouble. It has been a long run of adversity,” he said.

Leslie Haley, the owner of the Falls bistro, this summer said the flood and high interest rates had a great deal to do with that restaurant’s closure.

Repercussions from the ailing national economy are widespread, but have been especially acute for the restaurant industry, according to the National Restaurant Association.  

The organization’s Restaurant Performance Index, a monthly composite index that tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. restaurant industry, worsened in September and fell to a new record low. 

“Nearly two out of three restaurant operators reported negative same-store sales and traffic levels in September, while 50 percent expect their sales in six months to be lower than the same period in the previous year,” said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of Research and Information Services for the association. 

“The rapid deterioration in economic conditions is reflected in operator sentiment, with a record 42 percent of restaurant operators saying the economy is currently the number-one challenge facing their business,” Riehle continued. “Operators aren’t optimistic about the economy looking forward either, with 50 percent expecting economic conditions to worsen in six months.” 

Another complicating element is the dramatic spike in the cost of doing business. 

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wholesale food prices jumped 8.2 percent from January to June of 2008.  This comes on the heels of a 7.6 percent hike in 2007, which was the most substantial price increase in 27 years. 

Because several of the restaurants that recently closed attracted a large number of visitors to the downtown area, it remains to be seen just how far-reaching the impact of multiple closings might be to neighboring retailers.  

“Every renaissance has a little bit different shape to it.  This last one was a dining-and-entertainment boom. To lose three of the staples within just a couple months period, it is going to pose a real challenge,” Fletcher said.   

“The restaurants were a big part of downtown,” Buster agreed. “It was becoming more of a restaurant destination, and it will be hurtful to not have them here.”  

Buster added that the silver lining to the situation could be that the newly empty storefronts translate to fresh opportunities.  

“I think that we’re still solidly in the crosshairs of the development trend out here.  It’s still very focused on Marble Falls, and there is room for new operators and new dreams. It’s just a matter of hanging on,” he said.

At one empty downtown site, new opportunity is already on the horizon. Husband and wife restauranteurs David Majoras and Sally Good plan to open their eatery, Texas Nation, in the coming weeks at 307 Main St. in Old Oak Square, which is the spot once occupied by Cecil & Co.