Sunset for the Sunrise Cafe? Businesses Face Uncertain Future with Plaza Sale
The longtime owner of College Plaza, just north of downtown Brevard, plans to sell the property to a developer as the future home of a large nonprofit, likely displacing more than a dozen enterprises.
BREVARD — Kim Burton, having polished off a plate of eggs and a bowl of roasted red pepper-and-smoked gouda soup, ticked off the reasons she eats at Sunrise Cafe several times a week.
“It’s affordable. It’s quality. The employees are genuine . . . and it’s a great place to meet and greet,” said Burton, the office manager of a nearby financial planning firm.
“I’ve already run into four or five people I know.”
But it wasn’t just tasty meals that Burton and other Sunrise customers were digesting at the Cafe Thursday morning. It was also the unwelcome news that the 25-year-old restaurant and more than a dozen other businesses in College Plaza, just north of downtown Brevard, will likely be forced to close or relocate as soon as September.
The Plaza’s longtime owner, Roger Galloway, has signed a contract to sell the property to Riddle Development of Hendersonville, which intends to remodel its buildings and lease them to a large nonprofit.
Though Sunrise owner Marisa Gariglio said she understands the sale as a business decision and hopes to relocate Sunrise if the deal closes, the cafe has become an institution where it is now, the way it is now.
In the right light, the rising-sun mural covering the front window looks like a folk-art masterpiece. Dozens of other locally produced images — paintings and photos — cover the Cafe’s walls. House rules are humorously enforced with signs saying, for example, “UNATTENDED CHILDREN WILL BE GIVEN ESPRESSO AND A FREE KITTEN.”
Also there’s the sandwiches, bagels, wraps and salads.
“Nothing fancy, but very, very good quality,” said Nancy Ester, a retired music teacher who had met Burton for a late breakfast.
The plans for the sale are not just about Sunrise, some residents say, and not just about the other popular businesses at the Plaza, including Pescado’s Burritos, White Squirrel Arcade and Sun Dragon Art & Fiber.
It’s about the erosion of Brevard as a city welcoming to local businesses, especially ones that can’t afford current, often crippling, rents of commercial property.
“We are losing too many of the small businesses that make our town unique and special,” read one of the more than 280 comments on a Facebook post about the planned sale from Tricia Paxton, owner of the TAN 360 salon in the Plaza.
Wrote another commenter: “The locals have to start figuring out a way to get our town back.”
The Deal
Andrew Riddle, the development firm’s managing director, understands such feelings, he said.
He spent most of Thursday sitting in one of the Plaza’s vacant stores with his English cream golden retriever, Gus, prepared to answer questions from residents about the planned purchase — and to absorb their outrage.
“I’m trying to be the face of people’s anger,” he said.
But the more they know about the plans, Riddle and Galloway said, the more likely they will be to accept them.
Both buyer and seller said the Plaza is badly in need of upgrades, which Galloway, 77, said he is no longer able to complete. The improvements Riddle plans include a new roof, HVAC system and parking lot, he said. The size of the buildings — totaling about 38,000 square feet, property records say — will not change. Neither will their height.
The renovated property, he said, will be leased to a “nonprofit, single-tenant user that will bring lots of great jobs to Transylvania County citizens and serve the needs of Transylvania County residents.”
Though Galloway said that the future occupant will be a healthcare organization, Riddle said he could not confirm that. And perhaps the most prominent local medical nonprofit, Blue Ridge Health, has no plans to move from its nearby Brevard office, Chief Executive Officer Richard Hudspeth wrote in response to an inquiry from NewsBeat.
Galloway said his father-in-law, Harrell Bagwell, was one of the partners who built the Plaza in the early 1960s.
A Piggly Wiggly grocery was the original anchor, he said, and Winn-Dixie later built and occupied a newer structure on the southern end of the Plaza.
Galloway began managing the property in 1986, when he was still a full-time DuPont employee, he said. After other family members died or moved away from town, he and his wife, Millie, became sole owners in the early 2000s.
They didn’t intend to sell, he said, “but we just decided it was best when the buyer called. We entertained it and liked what he had to say, so that’s where we are.”
“I’ve kept the rents down very low because I’m in favor of small businesses, and I really didn’t mean for this to happen the way it did,” he said. He considers several of the tenants friends, he said, and in particular, “I feel terrible about Sunrise.”
Riddle doesn’t like displacing businesses either, he said.
“I’m not an Atlanta developer who is going to put in an Office Depot and not give a rip about anybody else,” he said. “I’m not that guy.”
To Fight — Or Not
And whether Riddle can, in fact, displace existing businesses is not yet a sure thing, he said. Before the sale goes through, he must try to negotiate buyouts for tenants holding long-term leases.
If he cannot, he said, “I may have to work around them.”
Paxton said she bought the tanning business in January, when she signed a two-year lease. She plans to stay through the end of it, she wrote on Facebook, and “I am hoping others will choose to do the same.”
She respects Galloway’s right to sell and doesn’t want to harm him, she said in an interview Thursday. “He’s a very nice guy.”
She’s just hoping to convince him to find a buyer who will operate the property as a Plaza and allow the current businesses to remain.
It’s a way to stand up not just for her fellow tenants, she said, but for local enterprise in general.
“Our community has lost and is continuing to lose small businesses due to large business ventures,” she wrote on Facebook.
Gariglio, on the other hand, holds a lease that expires later this month. And if she sounded resigned about the sale, she said, it’s because “we’ve known about it for a little while already, a few weeks, and there’s not much I can do about it.”
Whether or not she can relocate will depend on her ability to find a reasonably priced new home for Sunrise. She’s determined to make the effort, she said, so she can continue to employ her seven staff members, some of whom have worked at the cafe for several years.
“I’m not jumping up and down about it because that’s not going to help anything,” she said of her reaction to news of the sale. “I am upset inside, but I’m not upset outwardly.”
Pandora Birkle, on the other hand, said “I’m super upset.”
“Marisa treats us really well,” said Birkle, 25, who has worked at Sunrise for three years. “Most of the employees in these buildings earn a living wage and not everywhere in Brevard does that for its workers, especially not service workers.”
Some of the cafe’s loyal customers were also openly dismayed, including maybe its most loyal customer, Chuck Chapman.
He is such a regular that the cafe served as his unofficial campaign headquarters when he ran for Brevard Mayor in 2021. Almost every meal he eats is prepared by Sunrise, he said, and he arrived late Thursday morning to take out a large paper bag holding his daily rations.
He pulled a large tub of soup from the bag to demonstrate how well the employees know him; the lid came decorated with a smiley face and a customized message: “What the Chuck!!!”
They show they care about him, he said, so he’s going to show he cares about their future and the future of the business they created.
“This s— got personal,” he said.
Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com
Sunrise Café was the first place we visited and we first visited Brevard over 10 years ago. We still go weekly. I hope they find a place they can relocate too. It is a great business.
Non profit is big business. Why not say what non profit? But we know one business will put 12? People out of business? Then who will pay the taxes to give to the non profit? Maybe the the old business owners and former employed people will then be in a position to get services from the many non profits in brevard.
Brevard is showing a trend that does not favor a sustainable community but immediate profit making on any opportunity that presents itself.