Its location has always seemed attractive. Its names over the years, perhaps not so much — Dumpy’s, Shotgun Willie’s, Stumble In.
Now the closed-again restaurant/tavern at the top of so-called Creve Coeur hill is Terry’s, as in local resident Terry Cooper. That won’t be its name, however, if and when he reopens what in some ways has become a fitting symbol of promise and frustration for its host village.
“My guess is I’ll probably open it” as the Hilltop Grill, Cooper said last week as he leaned against one of the business’s two bar tops with Elvis Presley looking over his shoulder.
The life-sized cardboard cutout of young Elvis smiling in a gold-sequined jacket “came with the place” when he purchased it at the end of July, said Cooper, who has bought, refurbished and sold properties for three decades and also works as an engineer at USA Technologies in Peoria.
“I’d call this my main business” now, Cooper said. “I’ll put in a half-million dollars” of improvements in the 6,000-square-foot building. Still, “I bought it as an investment” and might sell it to another restaurant operator if the right deal comes along, he said.
The right deal apparently came to him. Saddled with the vacant building, the Village of Creve Coeur turned it over to Cooper at no cost, according to property records in the Tazewell County Assessor’s Office. Mayor Wayne Baker referred inquiries about the purchase price to that office.
In 2003 the village bought the closed Dumpy’s and gave it to Bloomington-based developer Mike Hadden as part of a private-public development project involving $725,000 of village tax-increment finance district funds. Along new streets built with those funds, Hadden built more than two dozen new homes in the new Rusche Junction subdivision and also opened Shotgun Willie’s in the former Dumpy’s at 100 Village Court.
In 2006, following a shooting in the business, the restaurant operation closed, while the bar remained open with its 4 a.m. license. Its named changed to Stumble In — a choice of the corporation that became Hadden’s partner. That venture also eventually closed, leaving the village as the building’s reluctant owner.
Cooper said he’s taking a laid-back approach both to his plans for the new restaurant/bar and when it will be ready to open.
“No timetable” exists for the latter, he said, though he spends hours each day after his engineering job on his one-man renovation efforts. While “the place was a mess” when he obtained it, Cooper said its electrical and plumbing services are in good shape.
He said he’ll shoot for a combination of steak restaurant and sports bar, with “TVs everywhere, inside and out.” Customers will be invited to cook their own steaks if they wish. “Grill and chill,” he said.
That is, if he decides to open and operate, rather than sell.
The restaurant field “is a tough business,” Cooper said. “But if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right.”
Copyright 2011 Pekin Daily Times. Some rights reserved
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