Longtime Sacramento restaurant Rio City Cafe set to shutter

Rio City Cafe, a longtime restaurant on Sacramento’s riverfront, will permanently stop feeding guests this weekend.

The restaurant said in an Instagram post this week that Saturday would be its last day of operations after its owners "could not reach an agreement with the City," which owns the building.

This comes after Rio City Cafe first indicated earlier in the month it would shutter and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg had subsequently told local media outlets he would attempt to help the local restaurant stay in business.

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"Over the past week I have worked hard to see if there is a way to keep the Rio City Cafe open in Old Sacramento while the city pursues plans for a larger waterfront renovation," he said in a Tuesday statement about the restaurant's upcoming closure. "Unfortunately, owners Mark and Stephanie Miller informed me yesterday that they will close on Saturday. They need immediate access to a deck that the city’s structural engineers have determined is unsafe."

In April, the city closed Rio City Cafe’s covered deck. It previously shuttered the restaurant’s cocktail deck in 2019 with promised repairs delayed by COVID and a lack of funds, General Manager and co-owner Jimmy Gayaldo told FOX Business in an interview. 

Rio City Cafe was also forced to close for several weeks due to burst pipes during its busiest time of the year, General Manager and co-owner Jimmy Gayaldo told FOX Business in an interview. 

"With us losing both of our decks, our income has been reduced 50 or 60% and in the restaurant business, we just can’t stay afloat," Gayaldo said. "Financially, we just couldn’t keep taking the hits."

The closed patio spaces amounted to over 200 seats at the restaurant.

"We have no restaurant without our patio," Stephanie Miller, who also owns the restaurant along with her husband, told FOX Business. "So for two consecutive years, the patio has been on the docket to be fixed and for two consecutive years, the city council denied it due to funds."

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Miller said that the city "didn’t fix the building that we rented from them" despite it being the city’s responsibility as their landlord and that they lacked funds to do so.

In Steinberg’s Tuesday statement, the mayor said his goal was to "help this well-loved institution remain in business while providing time for both the restaurant and the city to evaluate the best long-term uses for the waterfront site."

Structural engineers he spoke with said there was "no way" to open the patio safely "without spending $1.5 million (or more) and at least six months in design and construction" for a short-term, partial fix and that a full repair would be "close to $5 million, which can be included in the waterfront renovation plan," according to the statement.

He also said the city has previously "offered to help build an outside dining area in front of the restaurant … and to adjust their rent."

Gayaldo said "the problem" with a front outside dining area was that "people come to our restaurant to sit by the river," a shortfall the mayor appeared to acknowledge in the statement.

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The statement said the city’s economic development staff recommended this year "not spending more than a million dollars of public money to temporarily repair the deck" and instead would "recommend soliciting proposals from potential tenants for the Rio City site and other key assets in Old Sacramento." It said the Millers "could have submitted their own proposal" if they chose to keep it open.

When Rio City Cafe closes after Saturday, it will mark the end of a 30-year-run for the restaurant.