Twenty-four years ago, Sunset Grill opened as a chic dining spot in the burgeoning Hillsboro Village neighborhood.
This week on New Year's Eve, Sunset Grill, located at 2001 Belcourt, served its last meal; owner Randy Rayburn decided to cut his losses on Sunset in favor of his other two restaurants, Cabana (also in Hillsboro Village) and Midtown Cafe (a reliable stalwart on 19th near Broadway).
"It's been a pretty emotional process," says Rayburn. "I had to deal with triage — closing Sunset Grill in order to save Midtown Cafe and Cabana." The surviving restaurants are solidly profitable, he says.
Rayburn says he had to let 28 employees go, though he says he's using his contacts as a hospitality business veteran to try to find jobs for the laid-off workers.
It’s a striking moment to see the man who’s been called the “godfather of Hillsboro Village” forced to close his flagship restaurant there. Though when you consider the parade of unsuccessful restaurants across the street at 2000 Belcourt (Boca Loca just closed there), Sunset’s run has been pretty remarkable.
Almost two-and-a-half decades is an eternity for a restaurant, and Rayburn says the place needed a reboot. “It’s a business that changes and evolves,” he says. “I just didn’t have the funding to do a major retrofit.”
Randy Rayburn
Rayburn says a contributing element to Sunset’s decline was the fact that he had to step back from hands-on involvement in the past few years due to his health, namely severe back trouble after nearly 50 years in the restaurant business, starting as a bus boy in 1975. “The feet go first, then the ankles, then the back.”
And Rayburn was able to add more balance to his life when he got married a few years ago and became a dad (his sons are ages 7 years and 14 months). “My priorities changed with the birth of Duke, now 7. My work family has been second priority — fortunately for me, unfortunately for Sunset.”
But Rayburn is in a somewhat different position than the typical owner of a folded restaurant venture. He owns the land on which Sunset stands, along with the coveted parcel that provides a restaurant parking lot across the street.
As for the Sunset property, Rayburn is working with commercial real estate agent Mark Robbins of Robbins Properties to either sell or lease the restaurant. Possibilities are being sorted out, but they include a turnkey opportunity, offering 6,400 square feet of restaurant space and 2-year-old kitchen equipment, or the space could be leased as a smaller restaurant footprint, with the back part of the building returned to its original form of retail storefronts.
As for the parking lot, it was briefly slated for development in 2008; the 20th and Belcourt structure would have offered commercial space and quadrupled the amount of parking for nearby restaurants. But the recession killed that plan. Rayburn doesn’t seem in any hurry to dispose of that property.
“We’ll see what the marketplace holds,” he says. “I’ve turned down apartments, I’ve turned down condos, I’ve turned down a grocery store.” He says any new project there will have to provide parking for the neighborhood restaurants, plus more.
“I can tell you whatever goes in there will bring great value to the neighborhood.” He pauses to laugh. “That’s why they call me the Godfather of Hillsboro Village.”
He takes pains to point out that he didn’t invent that nickname for himself. Nevertheless, he’s certainly earned his reputation as a businessman who’s shaped the neighborhood.
Though his career is hardly over, Rayburn makes a point of noting of three accomplishments over the years. He was one of the key players in drafting a landmark commercial overlay that has regulated development in Hillsboro Village. As a statewide figure in the hospitality industry, he led support for eliminating smoking in restaurants in 2007.
The third accomplishment he counts as a partial victory. He fought legislation to allow patrons to carry guns in bars; the law passed, but restaurant owners are allowed to post their property as a no-gun zone. He also has been a big figure in the city’s tourism industry. He spent 10 years on the board of the Nashville Convention Center, and he was an active proponent of the new Music City Center.
The opening of the MCC in 2013 has helped set off a restaurant boom in SoBro; ironically contributing to the new Nashville restaurant scene, which boasts hot spots all over the city (downtown, East Nashville, Germantown and elsewhere) that have come to pose a challenge to grand ’90s ladies like Sunset Grill.
“The Village is still popular,” Rayburn says. “It’s just that other areas are popular, too.”
Rayburn has also been a big benefactor and activist on behalf of the culinary program at Nashville State. “You gotta tell people,” he says. “We’ve got scholarships for people, high school students and adults.” Then he adds with a laugh, “Free money.”
And while the school now bears Rayburn’s name, it’s more a practicality than an ego boost. The restaurant renaissance has led to a shortage of skilled restaurant workers.
Which is why he hopes Sunset’s former employees won’t be jobless for long. “I’ve got a 24-year veteran server,” he says, “and a dishwasher of 10 years.”
He adds, “With the quality of our pool of servers, anybody who doesn’t hire these people doesn’t deserve to stay in business one year.”
