Breakfast and lunch restaurant The Garden Gate Cafe will not reopen at 1135 Francis St. in Longmont, a decision that follows over a year of temporary closure for the business.

The Garden Gate Cafe closed in December of 2023, when a small fire led to some smoke damage in the building. While the size of the fire was small, the cost and effort required to reopen the building was extensive.

Steve Gaibler, owner of The Garden Gate Cafe, said insurance and code upgrades were hard hurdles to surmount in trying to reopen the space. Since the building was consistently occupied since 1981, one of the major problems was getting the space up to code for 2024.

“It ended up being kind of a perfect storm of so many things happening that were almost impossible to overcome,” he said. “After we would reinvest in that area, we would essentially be working for the code upgrades.”

Gaibler said the restaurant set tentative reopening dates throughout 2024, including Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. By the fall, the Garden Gate team had accepted that the location wouldn’t open again.

“This has been hard,” Gaibler said. “I really wanted to reopen, and we worked our tails off to try to reopen.”

The Garden Gate Cafe stopped occupying the building in November. After lease negotiations, the restaurant was officially released from the building last month.

The restaurant, which also has a Niwot location, opened in Longmont in 2018. The building, which is in a strip mall, used to be an Italian restaurant before Gaibler converted it into The Garden Gate Cafe.

Gaibler said he’s open to bringing the restaurant back to Longmont if he finds the right location at a reasonable price. He’s also currently looking at a potential location in Lafayette, and said he’s open to establishing one in Erie.

Now, the Garden Gate team is focused on running the Niwot location at 7960 Niwot Road. Gaibler said he’s not motivated to open a new location right away due to high egg prices.

“I’m not in a major hurry, just because eggs are really brutal on breakfast restaurants right now,” he said.Gaibler said Longmont fans of The Garden Gate Cafe are “pretty disappointed” by the closure. He said it was often hard to find a parking spot outside the Francis Street restaurant when it was open.

“It was something that people liked,” he said. “We were pretty busy all the time.”

Gaibler added that many of the Longmont customers have continued supporting the business in Niwot. Many custom- ers attend the Niwot location almost every day, he said.

The Niwot location of The Garden Gate Cafe will celebrate its 25th anniversary in July.