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Trio hope to revive town’s only restaurant

Community lost more than food when eatery closed, they say

The Columbian
Published: January 4, 2014, 4:00pm

MARCOLA, Ore. — Three friends are whipping out their own wallets to bring a beloved restaurant back to their community.

Tomahawk Investment Group LLC is looking to turn a potentially contaminated former gas station and sports bar property into an American-style restaurant — the only restaurant in the town of Marcola, said Barry Rogers, one-third of the group.

“There’s nothing else. I think the closest is the Springfield Country Club, which is about 15 miles south,” Rogers said.

Rogers, who has lived in Marcola for six years, said he and his fellow residents were sad to see Tomahawk Sports Bar and Grill close because of a financial dispute in early 2012.

“It was a really big loss when it closed,” he said. “It was something that people liked to go to, and from our perspective it really served a need in the community.”

Without the restaurant as a social hub, he said, the community northeast of Eugene has gathered only for public meetings and church services.

So Rogers, along with Laurie Smart and Bob Russel, whom he knew through his involvement in the Mohawk Valley Community Grange, decided to revive the restaurant.

After indicating their intent to buy, the trio discovered that recent testing on the property had revealed petroleum contamination — indicating that underground gas storage tanks from the property’s gas station were leaking. But after discussions with the state Department of Environmental Quality helped them understand the cleanup process, they decided to move forward with the purchase.

They completed the prospective purchaser agreement with the DEQ in December, stating that they intended to purchase the property and would allow the DEQ access for environmental investigation and cleanup regarding the potential petroleum leak.

The agreement said the group would not be liable for future contamination or cleanup costs on the property that operated as a gas station from the mid-1940s until 2012.

Smart, who has lived in Marcola for seven years, said she only went to the bar and grill “once in a great while” when it was open. Still, she feels the hole left in the community after the closing of the restaurant, which hosted a couple dozen people at a time on any given evening.

“As a community, we all miss it very much, because it’s the only gathering place outside of church,” Smart said. Now, she added, the rural community “feels more disjointed.”

She said the restaurant would give people a place to connect with friends and get to know neighbors.

Tomahawk Investment Group plans to purchase the property for $65,000 this month and pay the DEQ $10,000 for cleanup.

The Tomahawk group reported the contamination to the DEQ in October, drawing from a report that was submitted to Umpqua Bank in August 2012.

Over the next few months, the DEQ will examine the contamination, project manager Eric Clough said. That will involve removing the underground storage tanks that were installed in 1996 and are presumably leaking. The property will no longer function as a gas station.

The majority of the project will be covered by funds from the Environmental Protection Agency, Clough said, since the current property owner cannot afford it.

Rogers, who moved to Marcola from Chicago in 2008, doesn’t plan to run the restaurant himself — he wants to go there to kick back and enjoy a meal with his neighbors.

He and his team seek a tenant with experience running a small-town diner, and hope to open the restaurant — likely under a new name — in May.

“Our hope is to take the pumps out and put a deck out in front and really turn it into a nice place,” Rogers said. “Maybe even attract a few people out from Eugene from time to time.”

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