Sacramento Bee photogrpah/Anne Chafwick Williams
Randy Paragary has weighed in on midtown Sacramento's growth pains, noting that his restaurants at and about 28th and Capitol, like Biba (see item below), also are taking a hit because of Sutter Medical Center's expansion.
Business at his Cafe Bernardo at 28th and Capitol is off 20 percent, not so much at Paragary's Bar & Oven at 28th and N, where valet parking is available for $3.
"It's very disruptive, but all knew it was coming. Sutter has done an outstanding job of reaching out to us to let us know what they were doing," Paragary says.
And like Biba Caggiano, Paragary is confident the new medical facilities ultimately will benefit restaurants in the neighborhood. And some of those benefits could start to materialize in less than a year. He notes that restaurants in the area lost a large parking area at 28th and N when the project got under way, but rising on that site is an 1,100-vehicle parking garage, scheduled to be completed next February. "It's going to be good in the long run, we just have to suffer in the meantime," Paragary says.
But he isn't suffering too much in the meantime. Business at his Spataro Restaurant & Bar and Esquire Grill, both downtown, is up 25 percent so far this quarter over the same period a year ago, he says. He credits in large part gatherings at the Sacramento Convention Center and activities surrounding the inauguration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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