Owner Nelson Kugel will be celebrating 50 years the Gondolier on Pearl Street has been open in Boulder, Colorado December 16, 2010. CAMERA/Mark Leffingwell
Restaurant shuttered its Pearl Street location last fall
By Alicia Wallace, Camera Business Writer
The owner of The Gondolier — the venerable Italian restaurant that operated for 52 years in Boulder before closing its doors last fall — plans to re-open the eatery at the Meadows on the Parkway shopping center in southeast Boulder within the next 90 days.
The Gondolier leased a 5,176-square-foot space at the Safeway-anchored center at 4800 Baseline Road, near Foothills Highway, said Noah Waldera, a partner of WalderaScott Real Estate Partners, a Denver-based real estate firm that represents the Meadows on the Parkway’s owners.
“Boy, it was a lot of work, but it feels good” to have a location, said Gondolier owner Nelson Kugel, whose father opened the restaurant at Broadway and Marine Street in 1960.
The presence of a longtime locally operated restaurant should “go a long way” in boosting traffic and leasing activity at the shopping center, Waldera said.
“It’ll help draw the families as well as the students,” he said.
The Gondolier is expected to open within the next three months in Suite A104, a space formerly occupied by CiCi’s Pizza.
Last September, Kugel shuttered the Gondolier because of the size of its downtown Boulder space at 1600 Pearl St., the planned remodeling of that property and the expiration of the restaurant’s lease.
Kugel told the Daily Camera at the time and in the following months that he was searching for a more family-friendly spot with lower rent to allow the Gondolier to remain a “neighborhood restaurant” with affordable fare.
“We really wanted to be priced reasonably and we couldn’t do that if the rent was too much,” Kugel said Wednesday. “That’s where my dad started, and that’s where the Gondolier had been.”
Kugel’s search, which started in April 2012, took him to places throughout Boulder and into Longmont, Superior and Lafayette, he said. Kugel has been in discussions with the Meadows representatives since December, but for other spaces.
When the former CiCi’s space opened up earlier this year, “all the pieces fell into place” and Kugel moved forward.
“I’m pretty excited about this space,” he said. “We wanted to get into a neighborhood area and the Meadows doesn’t have (a) restaurant set up like the Gondolier.”
All-you-can-eat spaghetti
Targeting a mid-October opening, the Gondolier is expected to initially seat 146 people and have a menu with entrees ranging from $7 to $16.
The staples — such as the pasta, pizza and minestrone soup — will remain, but the new menu will be simplified and highly focused on seasonal items, Kugel said. The restaurant’s plans also include 15 taps for craft beer and tap wine.
Kugel said that while the Pearl Street location didn’t feature the Gondolier’s signature Tuesday night all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner, he plans to bring it back at the new location.
“Second-phase” plans for the restaurant call for the addition of family dinners, the offering of weekend brunch and the build-out of a private dining room, he said.
Filling out shopping center
The Gondolier is one of several new arrivals at the Meadows on the Parkway center, which was acquired by a subsidiary of Honolulu-based Alexander & Baldwin for $30.8 million in 2010.
The Meadows on the Parkway officials have reached agreements with a financial institution and Anytime Fitness to open in the former Blockbuster Video space and are in the final stages of negotiations to lease the space vacated by The Little Gym to a national salon group, Waldera said.
Those transactions are expected to bring the 216,400-square-foot center to more than 93 percent leased, he said. At the time of the A&B acquisition, the Meadows had an 83-percent occupancy rate.
Original article: http://www.dailycamera.com/business_old/ci_23544577/gondolier-returns-50-year-old-boulder-eatery-re