C. Oregon restaurants look for new opportunities
A long-closed La Pine restaurant is looking for someone new to take over the reins and get things going again.
The Sugar Pine Cafe is hard to miss, as it sits right on Highway 97 at Finley Butte Road.
Now there’s a new owner looking for someone who can take over the restaurant and bring it back to life.
The restaurant has had quite the past and has seen many different owners over the years. But it has been closed down since 2014.
Teri Myers of the La Pine Chamber of Commerce said it’s time for the restaurant to make a comeback.
“They’d be able to handle a lot of people, and it’s on the highway — only visible one from the highway, really obvious that would be a good place for somebody to settle,” Myers said.
The new owner plans to make improvements to the site, including repaving the parking lot and painting the building.
Myers said there is definitely a need for a restaurant like this in La Pine, sdding that with the growth the town has seen in recent years they will be able to support a new restaurant in the city.
Myers said the restaurant was instrumental in getting a sewer system for the La Pine community as the septic tanks in the area began to break down back in the ’80s.
“They needed to be the ones that kind of led the way into us kind of thinking about. ‘Let’s have a (sewer) system here in town,’ which went in way before the town was even a town,” Myers said.
In dining news elsewhere on the High Desert, Hola! has also opened up another location in Central Oregon, this time on the Metolius River.
The restaurant has opened in the former home of the Kokanee Cafe.
The manager of the restaurant, Antonio Guytron, said they have had a great reception from the community since they opened their doors in April.
“Nothing but positivity, man — everybody is excited,” Gutron said. “They’re happy we’re out there. They don’t have to commute into town, to get great margaritas on the Metolius, so it’s great!”
This is the sixth location for the Hola! franchise and the first outside of the Bend, Redmond, and Sunriver areas.
