LEWISTON — The owner and developer of a railroad-themed restaurant said she’s still planning to open at some point, but she wouldn’t say much more.
Karen Pulkkinen, the developer and would-be restaurant owner, said she is working toward a fall opening date for her Grand Trunk Cafe, despite issues with the building.
“I have one dream and one dream only — and that’s to open up this restaurant with a train theme and offer jobs to the community,” Pulkkinen said.
She declined further comment and canceled an interview to discuss her restaurant Tuesday afternoon.
Pulkkinen in January signed a roughly $21,000 per year lease with LA Railroad, owners of the historic building at 103 Lincoln St. It was built in 1899 and served as the landing spot for many of Lewiston-Auburn’s Canadian immigrants. It’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979.
Lucien Gosselin, president of LA Railroad, said Pulkkinen is current on her lease payments.
“The lease does not have a drop-dead date on renovations,” he said. “So there’s nothing we can do at this point, except wait.”
The process to develop the historic building has been ongoing since 2010, when the city and the railroad began paying for renovations. Work was paid for with a $200,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant and $115,800 of Lewiston’s Community Development Block Grant allocation. The railroad itself has paid about $65,000 to renovate the building.
The railroad began working with Pulkkinen in 2011 to turn the building into a restaurant, but issues with water leaking into the building slowed negotiations.
Two large puddles of water were discovered in the basement in spring 2012 — one blamed on heavy spring rains and the second on a broken valve on the building’s basement fire sprinkler — and the project picked up a $5,100 EPA Brownfields grant to disinfect the basement and keep mold from growing.
That work wrapped up last summer, and Pulkkinen and the railroad signed the lease in October. She agreed to pay $10 per square foot per year for the roughly 2,100-square-foot space. According to Gosselin, Pulkkinen had until January to modify the building’s interior to her liking. That’s when her first lease payment was due.
There have been issues with the building since Pulkkinen took over, he said.
“Admittedly, there were things that did not suit the tenant very well, and some of these things have been addressed,” Gosselin said. “For example, there was work on the exterior doors. From the inside, people could see daylight from under those doors. So, it was not an unreasonable request for us to deal with those issues, and we dealt with them and we have been as accommodating as we can. At this point, the ball is in her court.”
The Grand Trunk Cafe website, at www.grandtrunkcafe.com, is live on the Internet.
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