CITY SEEKS TO REOPEN AIRPORT RESTAURANT

The city of Cape Girardeau has crashed so far in its efforts to keep a restaurant at the regional airport.

The latest operator of the Runway Restaurant in the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport terminal closed the doors at the end of April and left town.

Trevier Minton of West Frankfort, Ill., never paid the city a dime under a liberal lease arrangement with the city after he took over the airport restaurant in December. Minton doesn't have a listed telephone number and couldn't be reached for comment.

Under the agreement, lease payments were based on a sliding scale tied to annual gross sales at the restaurant.

The restaurant had to have gross sales of at least $125,000 a month before it had to pay a lease payment equal to 1 percent of that month's sales amount.

At $200,000 a month, the base monthly rent would have been $335 and Minton also would have had to pay an amount equal to 2 percent of gross sales.

City officials had requested financial information from Minton, but he never provided any before suddenly shutting down the restaurant.

But John Richbourg, city finance director, said he doubts the restaurant was making enough money for the lease payments to kick in.

The city continued to pay the $500 a month utility bill and made some improvements to the restaurant.

"I guess the only financial payback was it cost less than when the city operated the restaurant itself," said Richbourg.

The city had projected spending $122,000 to operate the restaurant in 1995-96. With revenue projected at $72,000, the city anticipated having to subsidize the operation by $50,000.

The city ended up operating the restaurant for only five months of the fiscal year before entering into a contract with Minton.

In all, the city operated the restaurant at a loss from mid-August 1994 until December 1995. Prior to that it was a privately operated restaurant.

The City Council and city staff said they wanted to cut their losses and get out of the restaurant business.

At this point, the city isn't interested in getting back in the business, city officials said, and hopes to attract another private party to operate it.

But Councilman Richard Eggimann suggested the city consider leasing the space for other uses than a restaurant. Eggimann said he doesn't believe there is sufficient customer traffic to make a restaurant operation profitable.

"They are wasting their time trying to find someone to run it," he said.

Mayor Al Spradling III said the city doesn't know if Minton was making a profit.

"He had a big party and then bailed out. That is all we know," said Spradling.

"I can't answer whether he was making money or not," the mayor said. "I would have liked to have had some of Trevier's records to analyze."

Spradling added that the restaurant was attracting a sizable lunch crowd when it closed.

The city's Airport Advisory Board has insisted that the airport needs a restaurant to serve the flying public.

Randy Holdman, the city's former airport manager and a member of the airport board, said a restaurant can't be viewed strictly in dollars and cents. He said a restaurant is important to attracting customers to the airport, including visiting business executives.

The airport is a better industrial development tool with a restaurant than without one, he said.

"You've got to service the passengers as well as the airplane, but we can't do that right now," Holdman said.

He said if the city can operate a snack bar at the municipal golf course, it could also run a restaurant at the airport.

Holdman said even a snack bar would be better than having no restaurant at all.

Greg Chenoweth, airport manager, maintained there is a market for an airport restaurant.

In an effort to boost the airport, the airport board has set up two committees: one on facilities planning and another on public relations.

Holdman said the city needs to do a better job of marketing the airport.

But he said the board through the committees isn't attempting to usurp the power of the airport manager and other city officials.

"I think we are simply trying to help," Holdman said.