The speculation is over. After sitting vacant since July 2011, the Market at Pavilions has a new tenant.
That would be Sacramento restaurateur Randy Paragary (pictured), who has signed a lease and plans to renovate the space and open a Cafe Bernardo in the 4,000 square-foot space by June.
The new Cafe Bernardo will be the fifth in the Paragary Restaurant Group, which also operates Paragary's Bar & Oven, Esquire Grill, Spataro and Centro, as well as three bars.
The Cafe Bernardo concept is described on the company's website, www.paragarys.com as "relaxed casual" and "inspired by the European tradition of cafe dining."
Calls to Paragary and his restaurant-group offices were not returned.
The specialty-foods Market at Pavilions closed its doors July 1, 2011, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy from its creditors in April 2011.
Until 2008, the Market had been owned by food-and-wine expert David Berkley for 25 years and was called David Berkley Fine Wines & Specialty Foods.
In July 2008, Berkley sold his store to Greg Rhategan and investor Raymond Matteson. Rhategan was a specialty-foods and wine purveyor and restaurateur from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and was the face of the Market.
The Market's landlord - and now Paragary's - was the Costa Mesa-based retail-property company Donahue Schriber, which owns Pavilions.
At the time of the Market's closure, Donahue Schriber marketing director Audrey Yokota said the company was ready to move on. "We want to find a replacement (for the Market)," she said then. "Our leasing agents are talking with a number of players and prospects."
One well-known restaurateur whose name kept coming up as a possible new tenant was Randall Selland, whose Selland Group owns the Sacramento fine-dining restaurants Ella and The Kitchen.
Shortly before opening a second Selland's Market Cafe in Eldorado Hills Town Center in January 2012 (the original cafe is on H Street in east Sacramento), he said he was exploring additional expansion opportunities. One of them was the empty Market at Pavilions.
"There's a possibility we will open something there and still keep our (H Street) location," he said at the time. "We've been talking to Donahue Schriber about that space for a long time."
Obviously, that didn't happen.
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "report abuse" button below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.