Post #361984 by Luckydesigns on Mon, Feb 18, 2008 5:43 PM

I happened to go to lunch this weekend in Palm Springs with one of the investors that bought the place when we thought it was gonna be destroyed. Full coincidence though.... He's the boyfriend of my girlfriend's friend. Super funny, young, nice guy, with little to no concern for what it once was. He's a surfer and liked that it was a tiki bar but that was the extent of it..... They were all about making it a club.
I was very good at restraining myself (haha)....

So I think he said that they put three or four hundred grand into the place, and then as we know now, sold it. He said that they didn't have original plans to make it into the restaurant again or preserve the tiki vibe really. They just wanted to make it a modern dance club and 'have fun'. I guess the investors were split on that idea...

He sited many reasons why it was failing but never came to the conclusion that it could have been the drinks and music and service.... Even he admitted that the food was too expensive. I know anyone of us feels like they could do the place right and make money off of it. In reality though, the location is tough and it's a huge restaurant to fill and staff!! The rent was really expensive too, I guess.

It also took them 8 months of owning it before they could even start getting people into the restaurant. That's a lot of down time and wasted money...

So, I guess we'll see what the new owners are gonna do with it. I think he said they were gonna rename it the Kona Burger something..... I hope these guys don't blow it.

Also, he actually lived at Sam's for a while in the back office. How rad would that have been?? Well...rad and pretty damn scary at night, I would guess.

What's going on with the land? Is it still slated for condos eventually? It needs historic building classification like Harvey's Broiler....