After 18 years in business, the Statesboro Applebee's closed April 7, leaving a restaurant building designed for a particular brand vacant in a part of Statesboro with a high volume of retail and dining traffic.
        The location on U.S. Highway 80, just outside the U.S. 301 Bypass in front of Lowe's, suggests high desirability. But the record for reselling custom-built restaurant properties in Statesboro is mixed.
        After the company that owns the Ryan's chain closed its Statesboro restaurant in early March 2016, Ole Times Country Buffet opened in the same building, next door to Applebee's, two months later. The Ole Times is thriving, but it is part of a Valdosta-based regional chain forged on the unique business model of resurrecting former Ryan's and Golden Corral locations.
        In contrast, after sitting vacant for six years, the former Carey Hilliard's offers an obvious example of how "location, location, location" doesn't always result in a rapid sale for former restaurants. Owned by the family-controlled company that operates the restaurants of the same name in Savannah, the Carey Hilliard's at Statesboro Crossing was in business not quite two years before it closed on Memorial Day weekend 2011.
        Yet Statesboro Crossing boasts Hobby Lobby, T.J. Maxx and Books-A-Million, as well as several restaurants, and the vacant Carey Hilliard's building occupies the prime spot at a traffic light, across from another retail center and the Brannen Street entrance to Wal-Mart.
        "Those high-dollar, well located properties, which often are franchise properties in the restaurant world, they're so expensive to build and therefore sell for people that are trying to get their money back that oftentimes with the purchase price, somebody looking to enter the market finds it less expensive to try to build at a new location," said Todd Manack, owner of Manack Signature Properties.

Brand-specific
        With restaurants, the design of the building is often specific to the brand, so adapting one can mean "trying to make it look like something that it's not," he said. Manack used the example, but said it was a terrible one, of trying to turn the Carey Hilliard's into a Red Lobster.
        "So unless the market gets so tight with real estate that there's no other options, other than buying and tearing it down and starting over, or spending and having the option to go in and retrofit, those buildings potentially are going to sit there a while," he said.
        A psychological factor, of "not wanting to go where something else died," sometimes becomes part of the challenge, he added.
        "I don't mean to be morbid about it, but I know in the big-box business, to talk a grocery store into going back behind one that's already failed, or other stores for that matter, is sometimes a harder pitch," Manack said.
        His company handled the Statesboro Crossing land when it was sold to the original developers. Manack continues to market lots in the shopping center, but has not represented the Carey Hilliard's building in the efforts to resell it since it closed.

Hilliard's price down
        Of course, price can also be a factor, and it's one that Nick Propps, president of Statesboro Properties, hopes will be a decisive one as his firm takes a second turn marketing the former Carey Hilliard's. Propps previously listed the building, which has at other times been represented by other real estate firms, about two years ago.
        During that time, the owners reduced the asking price in steps from $2.9 million to about $2.2 million. Propps started listing the building again about two months ago, and the list price is now $1,375,000.
        "It's absolutely a first-class location, and I think before it was a matter of price, and now it's very aggressively priced, to allow someone to come in and adapt it to their specific brand and still be getting a tremendous value for that property," Propps said.
        The former Carey Hilliard's has had about $3 million invested in it, making it "a steal" at the current price, Propps said. The Statesboro Properties website notes that the 7,322-square-foot building features no-touch restroom fixtures, a digital lighting control system, and a dining room meeting space with an automated audiovisual system.
        Most buyers of commercial buildings want to make changes, Propps acknowledges.
        "It was a harder position to be in to pay $2.9 million and still have to customize the building, but now it could be used as a restaurant or even other types of retail uses, and we do have some people looking at it that are not traditional restaurants because of the price point of the property," he said.

No site work
        When the price is right, buying an existing building involves less time and fewer uncertainties, Propps said.
        "One of the biggest expenses we see with commercial developments is site work and all of the unknowns that you get into, such as bad weather delays," he said. "Well, when you buy existing, you don't have that. I could hand you the key and you could literally start working tomorrow."
        Statesboro Properties handled another vacant restaurant property, the former Fuzzy's Tacos, which recently sold to the group that owns the Millhouse Steakhouse.
        At least when interviewed for this story nearly two weeks ago, neither Manack nor Propps was representing the Applebee's building, and it had no real estate sign up yet.
        "With the traffic counts that exist there, the visibility that it has, I think it's a good location," Manack said. "I have no idea, you know, why it closed. They obviously were not meeting their projections."
        "Every site has unique benefits, pros and cons to different businesses," Propps said. "So Applebee's will be looked at differently than Carey Hilliard's because obviously Carey Hilliard's sits in front of an active shopping center, one of the most active that we have in town; Applebee's sits in front of Lowe's."

Restaurants still coming
        Both real estate brokers reported continued interest in restaurants locating here.
        Manack is currently representing the SpringHill Suites Conference Center building, which is being spun off by the hotel's ownership. The conference center has a caterers' kitchen but is not a restaurant.
        "But it is a great property for a fine-dining concept, and we've actually had interest from a fine-dining restaurant ... but we've also got a bank interested in the same property," Manack said.
        Propps said he is working with another potential development, "a good size, very professionally done, upscale restaurant," with an announcement possible next month. It will be built new, he said.

Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.