A short history of The Classic Café at Roanoke

What is now The Classic Café consists of four historic buildings. The main dining room was an army barracks, the bar area was Mr. A. R. Wheeler’s garage, and the kitchen was the Roanoke Creamery, an 1890’s fixture that was moved from it earlier location next to Babe’s Chicken Dinner House in the late 1950s. The two-story building was added in 1989.

The army barracks were disassembled and loaded on a flatbed truck and moved from an army base near Abilene. It was reassembled and moved to its current location in Roanoke by the Clark family. Later, Mr. Wheeler purchased the property and improved the garage in the mid-1960s. There was a dog run between the house and garage. During this time, the buildings were separated and used as residential property.

Jim and Barbara Saegert of Trophy Club purchased the property in the early 1980s and opened a mixed-use property that included a dress shop called Baraboo’s, a travel agency and a tearoom owned by Annabel Daniels. Jim and Barbara Saegert needed to expand the women’s apparel store, so they built the two-story structure next door to house the expanded Baraboo’s and general office rentals.

A myriad of business have used those offices over the years including: Meals on Wheels, Roanoke Hair Salon, and a Scuba shop. Currently, The Classic Café uses the two-story structure for catering and private dining.

Brian and Brian’s restaurant opened in late 1989. It was operated by Brian Dashner and Brian Irwin. It was operated for four years as a prime rib and hamburger restaurant. At this time, the buildings were tied together to make the current form of one building and the porches were added.

The two main reasons that Brian and Brian’s went out of business were that IBM made major cutbacks in the Solana business complex and the Texas highway 377 bridge was washed out. Jim and Barbara Saegert were faced with an empty restaurant site.

I was a commercial real estate appraiser in 1993. One of my colleagues was involved in a valuation of the Circle T Ranch, which had gone into foreclosure from Bunker Hunt after his famous silver play. This friend told me about the property.

Curt and I had been looking all over Texas for the perfect place to open up a family business.

Curt was first to look at the property with his wife Joan. They peered into to windows on a Sunday afternoon and saw a redneck, western-themed restaurant that had pizza ovens, a smoker in the office and an ice cream dipping cabinet in the dining room. Also littering the floor were breakfast menus, stating “now open for breakfast.” It appears that Brian and Brian had tried everything they could to stay in business (and, of course, they had). Curt called me and told me to keep looking: this place was not for us. I went out to look at the property and had the same feeling; however, I was able to see some external market conditions that were changing.

Trophy Club was coming out of bankruptcy, Solana was recovering nicely, the 377 bridge was repaired, the Circle T had been purchased by Ross Perot, Jr.

Still, American Airlines sat as the only tenant at Alliance airport and Roanoke had a population of – so I was told – a population of 600 people.

I believe that may have been an exaggeration.

I had a gut feeling that this area was about to undergo a change.

So, in April 1993, my brother and I began re-modeling the buildings to open the restaurant in late April. Opening day was May 5, 1993. To get started, we borrowed $50,000 from our great Aunt Helen Price of Grapevine. My Aunt Carolyn Riegelman agreed to hang her artwork in our restaurant. We incorporated our Gushing Wells name and assumed a non-performing bank loan from Northwest Bank for $25,000. We were in business.

Our Mom and Dad believed in us and helped us feed everyone in northeast Tarrant County for free for a year. During that year I had a crash course in Restaurant 101.

On July 24 1996 we purchased one lot of three on the east side of the restaurant from the First Baptist church of Roanoke.

We purchased the restaurant property from Jim and Barbara Saegert on September 23, 1998.

We completed assembling the properties and tied them all together in and re-zoned the proprieties June 9, 1999.

In 2008, we re-modeled the restaurant room by room and added patio furniture and a cooking center for cooking classes and parties.

In 2009 we started the garden.

In 2010, the streetscape will be completed.