Louisville’s Waterloo restaurant will move its operations into the defunct space once occupied by Madera Grill this summer, expanding the local haunt’s presence along the city’s booming downtown corridor.
The Austin-born eatery will relocate its restaurant operations into the empty building at 817 Main St., while maintaining the current space as a local music venue, according to owner Josh Karp.
“The new space will be focused more on the restaurant side of things,” Karp, who has indicated in recent months that relatively quaint 1,800-square-foot space has been a chore to keep flexible, said Friday. “Right now at our current location we’re doing both and it’s hard to transition from a restaurant to a bar and music venue in that small space.”
The new digs hold two stories of indoor restaurant space accompanied by a rooftop patio that overlooks Main Street.
Madera shuttered its doors after less than two years of business amid slumping sales numbers in December.
The new space’s downstairs and second floor decor will mimic that of the current Waterloo space, Karp said, with plans for an expansion of the indoor patio enclosure on the rooftop to allow for winter use.
The new locale will also feature a remodelling of the building’s entry way in a style harkening back to the building’s 1902 Rex Theater roots.
Waterloo’s expansion plans will take shape amid a mixed economic backdrop currently unfolding in Louisville’s downtown sector.
Despite a continued growth in sales tax revenue for the district, several restaurants and a handful of retail shops have either closed their doors or moved west toward Boulder.
Amid complaints of slumping sales in recent weeks, however, the district continues to grow. The latest available sales tax revenue for the area, from January to September of last year, totaled $766,150, according to the city’s website. The number represents a 6 percent increase over all of 2015’s $722,630.
Despite the murky picture painted by the district’s conflicting identity, however, the eatery’s chances for success are much higher than most other restaurants, according to local realtor Kelly Greene.
“Say they do $350 per square foot in sales,” Greene, who speculated on the possible sales numbers the business could churn out, said Friday. “Out of their 4,300-square-foot building that would be around $1.5 million. If their profits are just 10 percent, it would equal roughly $300,000 in profit for them.
“That would be a hellacious good return for them,” he added. “If you multiply it they would repay themselves back in less than three years. If they manage to stay there for longer it will be an incredible investment.”
Though the move will likely cost roughly $300,000 and require Karp to bump his employee numbers into the 50s or 60s, he believes the move should pay off further down the line.
Amid a slew of new restaurant openings that have given patrons more options, Karp hopes to continue business with a scaled-down version.
“It’s going to cost us a fortune,” Karp said, “but in the long-run it will be cost effective. We’ve scaled back our menu so we can do what we’re doing great and when we move we can continue to grow.”
Karp owns the Main Street building that is home to both Waterloo and the space for what once held Madera under the entity Karp Holdings LLC.
The slated Waterloo upgrade comes on the heels of news that the iconic Blue Parrot property will be divvied up into three or four restaurant spaces.
“I think downtown Louisville is still a great place to do business,” Karp said. “There’s a lot of new residential properties that are going to bring a lot more new faces downtown.
“All the businesses really complement each other well,” he added. “When people drive downtown, instead of looking for a specific restaurant, they decide when they get here.”
Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
