AUBURN — After the closure of its fourth restaurant in less than five years, The Plaza of the Arts may not have a place in the downtown food landscape, its ownership said.
The latest of those restaurants, burger restaurant Patty Shack, closed a couple weeks ago, Dan Soules said Friday. Soules, of plaza owner Soules & Dunn Development Group, said the closure was abrupt and the restaurant's ownership has communicated little with the group about it.
The restaurant was in April 2017 by Gena Poggi and Jeff Verno, who also own the Empire Bar & Grill in Webster and Macedon, as well as a Patty Shack location in Macedon. The Auburn location abruptly closed in December due to slow sales before reopening in April.
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Poggi and Verno did not respond to a request for comment.
While Soules believes "their heart was there," he also wishes Patty Shack's owners did more to improve the restaurant upon reopening. It recorded one unsatisfactory inspection by the Cayuga County Health Department before its first closure, and one afterward.
"I really don't think they changed their operations much at all," Soules said. "Which, from our perspective, was kind of disappointing because it didn't work the first time. So why's it going to work the second time?"
Patty Shack's owners continue to make payments on their five-year lease, Soules said. Still, Soules & Dunn is searching for a new tenant so the group can reactivate the space. Because the group has invested in the space's use as a restaurant, Soules would prefer another food tenant. But given the space's history, Soules is open to other ideas — such as medical offices, which already occupy much of the rest of the plaza.
That history began when the plaza in July 2014 with two food tenants: barbecue/yogurt/café hybrid and . About a year later, both had closed. The Encore space would be converted into office space for life insurance group , while the deli space became burger restaurant . But The Counter, too, would in June 2016, also about a year after it opened.
Soules — whose group owns 40 Arby's locations that it also used to operate — wondered whether the plaza space's lack of success means that downtown Auburn has hit its restaurant saturation point. With so many new ones opening in the area in the past five years, he said, there appears to be little, if any, room for more.
"I'm not as optimistic about more restaurants downtown as I was in the past," he said. "I think we've all found out that it's a tougher market than we thought it would be."
