The building best known by locals as Bonnie’s Corner Cafe is set to make a comeback in August.
Tina Spiares and her husband Russ Gardner are hustling to complete a mound of renovations to the building that has been vacant since 2016. It was known as Ruth and Earl’s, but for less than a year.
From painting to tearing out walls, Spiares and Gardner have their plates full. New plumbing throughout the gutted building is being installed and it has no gas lines.
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“We don’t know where the gas lines went,” Spiares restaurant of seven years, “Tina’s Place,” in Pleasanton.
“It was the place to go. Everyone in Pleasanton is mad at me,” she said of her decision to shut it down last winter.
The couple set their sights on a house in Spooner, Wis., and sold their residence in Pleasanton. Before the purchase was finalized, the area where the Spooner house was situated was rezoned as a flood zone. The couple decided not to purchase the home, but then had to find a new place to dwell. Spiares shopped online and found the new love-of-her-life, a house located near the Allen County Country Club. The couple, their daughter Jasmine, Spiares’s mother Holly and five dogs made the move to Allen County. In hindsight, Spiares said living in Wisconsin would have been hard because of the distance from her two grandchildren located in Pleasanton, now just an hour away.
Not too long after moving to Allen County, Spiares, who had no intention of going back to work full-time, stumbled across the old Bonnie’s Corner Cafe building. Spiares got inspired.
The people in Allen County are friendly and supportive and I am glad things worked out the way they did, she said.
Tina’s Place (number two) will be open Wednesday through Saturday from 7a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sundays 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
We will have a buffet and salad bar and all-you-can-eat and daily specials made homemade, such as chicken and noodles, meatloaf and salisbury steak, Spiares said.
A problem she hopes is not part of the “Tina’s Place” legacy is being able to find good help.
She will be hiring, but intends to be picky, she said.
“It’s not easy work. Everyone thinks it is easy, it’s not. It’s one of the hardest things out there,” she said of restaurant work.
