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The owners of Rue Dumaine are re-thinking their commitment to move the highly credentialed restaurant to the Austin Landing development and to open a second restaurant concept there.
Anne Kearney, the executive chef and co-owner of Rue Dumaine, has been telling patrons of the restaurant that Rue Dumaine will not be making the move to Austin Landing. The delays in construction of the portion of Austin Landing that was to hold Rue Dumaine and its sister restaurant Alligator Annie’s — along with the elimination from the project’s plans of some of its originally announced amenities — prompted her to give up on Austin Landing and to start looking elsewhere for a new location, Kearney said.
But Thomas Sand Jr., Kearney’s husband and the co-owner of Rue Dumaine, said the restaurant’s owners haven’t made a final decision about Austin Landing — although he acknowledged they are looking elsewhere. “All options are on the table,” Sand said. Both Sand and Kearney have said Rue Dumaine has outgrown its existing leased space at 1061 Miamisburg-Centerville Road in Washington Twp.
Losing Rue Dumaine would be a blow to the prestige of the dining and entertainment offerings in Austin Landing’s 142-acre mixed-use development. The James Beard Foundation, which each year gives out the equivalent of Academy Awards for U.S. restaurants, named Rue Dumaine a semifinalist for the foundation’s “Best New Restaurant” in America in 2008. For the last three years, Kearney has been named a semifinalist for the foundation’s “Best Chefs in America” competition for the Great Lakes region – the only Dayton-area chef recognized in the awards program.
Messages left Friday with Austin Landing’s developer, R.G. Properties CEO Randy Gunlock, and with R.G. Properties Marketing Director Mary Beth Reser, seeking comment were not returned.
In January 2012, when Gunlock and Rue Dumaine’s owners jointly announced that the restaurant would relocate to Austin Landing, Gunlock said Rue Dumaine would be “a perfect fit” for the Miami Twp. development. That announcement also said construction of the portion of Austin Landing that would house Rue Dumaine, Alligator Annie’s and the Dublin 7 pub was expected to begin in 2012, with the restaurants expected to open in “early 2013.”
But by August 2013, the project was at least 18 months behind schedule. Both Sand and Steve Tieber, owner of the Dublin 7, told the Dayton Daily News last August that R.G. Propertites’ revised project timeline called for ground to be broken in the fall of 2013 with completion projected in the fall of 2014.
Tieber, owner of the Dublin Pub in Dayton’s Oregon District, said Friday that he remains “100 percent committed” to the Austin Landing location for his new venture, with a full name of the Dublin 7 Whiskey Pub & Carvery.
The Austin Landing development “is still a perfect location for our expansion and growth,” Tieber said. “The timeline is still a fall opening, which is great for us.”
The first phase of Austin Landing — including three office buildings, a hotel, a department store and a supermarket — is largely complete, and a BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse opened in an 8,300-square-foot stand-alone building in mid-September, two months after a Panera Bread bakery-café opened in the development.
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