×
×
homepage logo
LOGIN
SUBSCRIBE

Downtown Nashua restaurant for sale, but which one is still a mystery

By Staff | Jan 15, 2010

The dining section offers a look repeated in many other restaurants: a brick wall adorned with framed photos and small, candlelit tables to encourage intimacy.

The stone-top bar invites lively conversation and the cherry-stained wood panels add to the warm atmosphere.

This restaurant is for sale in downtown Nashua, but where exactly is anyone’s guess. Its location is known only to a Realtor and the restaurateur selling the establishment.

Unless you’re willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, particulars about the commercial space will be kept secret.

Clifford Harris, the real estate agent offering the restaurant, does reveal that the equipment and furniture of the Main Street eatery can be had for $264,999 and the building space for a monthly lease of $2,566.

Harris, of Prudential Verani Realty, also says the 75-seat venture was created between 2007 and 2008. And he includes photographs of the dining room and bar on the listing.

But other than a few more details about the building, that’s all Harris will let on about this business-only sale. Harris said he takes these steps to protect the business operating there now.

“What you don’t want to do is advertise that the business is for sale,” Harris said. “You don’t want to lose customers or lose chefs. … The main purpose of a non-disclosure is that it keeps the business in operation.”

And so the eatery mystery begins.

Where is this restaurant? And what business, by implication, could close?

The listing prompted many guesses this week among restaurateurs, their patrons and other business owners in downtown Nashua.

It sparked a parlor game that illustrated how people in the downtown business community are always curious about how the competition is faring.

More than a dozen people interviewed thought they recognized the cozy dining area but couldn’t reach a consensus on where it was. The bar also looked familiar to them, but they couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

Several people pointed to Saffron Bistro, but employees there said the business is not for sale. Moreover, the interior of Saffron Bistro didn’t match the listing photos.

Other people believed it was Adria, which serves Mediterranean dishes. But the photos of the listed property also don’t align with what’s inside Adria.

Miralem Mulabegovic, manager of Adria, also said his Main Street restaurant is not closing. It recently had shut down only temporarily because the head chef was sick, but Adria is back in business, he said.

Other downtown restaurants – including Peddler’s Daughter, Michael Timothy’s and Villa Banca – were suspected to be for sale. But, again, they didn’t fit the profile of the listed property.

Many downtown restaurants weren’t “newly designed” in 2007 and 2008, as the listing says.

And although several downtown restaurants have elements of what is seen in the photographs – brick walls, wood-paneled bars – none of them identically match the business for sale.

That’s because the photographs aren’t from the actual restaurant for sale. Harris swears he’s not using stock photos.

They are from an actual restaurant somewhere in New Hampshire.

“What I didn’t want to do is put the actual location on” the listing, Harris said. But the setting of the photographed restaurant resembles the one for sale in Nashua “very closely,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate you have a business looking to sell,” Harris added. “Fortunately, you have a restaurant that is fully equipped, and someone can move in there and start right away.”

To see the listing visit www.verani.com/listing/Nashua/NH/real-estate/2803900.

Albert McKeon can be reached at 594-5832 or amckeon@nashuatelegraph.com .

Newsletter

Join thousands already receiving our daily newsletter.

Interests
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *