Even on a Monday morning in Summit County’s shoulder season, the Arapahoe Cafe & Pub in Dillon was bustling. Before noon Oct. 9 — less than a week before the restaurant is scheduled to close its doors for good — more than a dozen guests stopped in for brunch.

Outside, customers filled the patio, two or three to a table, the sun glinting off the Dillon Reservoir in the distance. Inside, longtime owner and cook Doug Pierce stirred a spinach mushroom soup as servers rushed through tight hallways between the kitchen and the dining room, where several more guests sat.

The restaurant has a legacy as deep as the Dillon Reservoir, which it documents with historic photographs hung through the hallways. Constructed in the old town of Dillon in the 1940s, the cafe is a memento of the early ski era, when Max and Edna Dercum were developing Arapahoe Basin Ski Area. Edna Dercum was known to frequent the business in its various iterations over the years.

---

---

Like the town of Dillon, which moved to the fourth townsite in its history when the dam went up, the Arapahoe Cafe building has seemingly always been on the move. Even before the construction of the dam, Pierce said the building had been moved from its original location closer to Frisco into the old town of Dillon, where it became part of the Arapahoe Cafe and Inn.

A common hangout for construction crews who worked on the dam, the Arapahoe Cafe was one of the last buildings to be moved from the old town site before it reopened at its current location in 1962.

---

---

The business was briefly the only restaurant in the new town of Dillon and went by the Tappan House for a number of years before the name Arapahoe Cafe was restored. A decades-long Summit County resident, Pierce had been Keystone Resort’s food and beverage director for 25 years before buying the Arapahoe Cafe and opening it in 2002.

“We built it for the locals,” Pierce said in an interview Monday. “We said, ‘If we build it for the locals, the tourists will come.’ We wanted to build toward that concept: We know your name. We know what you want. We know where you’re from.” 

After more than 20 years, the beloved family restaurant is not closing because of lack of business, Pierce said. Nor is it closing because Pierce wishes to retire — he does not. Instead, the cafe is closing because the landlords will not renew the business’s lease, he said.

Pierce wore a Life Is Good baseball cap and a white apron as he sat in the basement pub which was added to the Arapahoe Cafe when it moved uphill in the ’60s. Beside him sat his daughter, Bonnie Lehman, who has helped run the business in various capacities since the family started it when she was 12.

“Our lease has expired, and we don’t have a new lease offered,” Lehman said. “The Best Western has every right to sell. They’ve been great landlords for 20 years. But our lease is expiring. It’s as simple as that.”

Change is coming to Dillon. It’s been a long time coming, Pierce said. Last year the property owners, who also own the Best Western Ptarmigan Lodge next door, told Arapahoe Cafe that they intended to sell and the business’s lease would expire at the end of the year, he said.

With liquor licenses and other business necessities such as insurance operating on a year-long cycle, the long-term viability of continuing the restaurant was called into question, Pierce said, so he made the hard decision to close “A Cafe.”

“The uncertainty has been hovering over us for a long, long, time. And our family did not deserve the uncertainty of the future. Our staff didn’t deserve the uncertainty,” Pierce said. “So I decided to be transparent with them and announce our closure.”

Earlier this year, a Michigan-based developer, Jake Porritt, pitched a 4- or 5-star hotel on the properties where the Arapahoe Cafe and Best Western now stand. Though Porritt has not yet purchased the properties or submitted any development plans to the town, his proposals have stirred rumors and anxiety among locals.

When Arapahoe Cafe announced on social media last month that it would be closing Oct. 15, citing a “very troubled development process,” the business further stirred the pot.

“Our decision was, let’s get out of the way. There’s a freight train coming down the tracks. We’re sitting in the middle of it,” Pierce said. “It wasn’t really until we said we’re getting out of the way, did everyone start talking about all this (development) activity, really.”

The Arapahoe Cafe’s announcement seemed to take the town by surprise. At a Dillon Town Council meeting after the announcement another business owner in the town core said the looming closure sent “shockwaves” through the community. She questioned whether her business’s lease could be next.

Mayor Carolyn Skowyra at that meeting acknowledged the “ripple effects” that Porritt’s hotel proposal has had and announced the council would brainstorm plans to “save” the Arapahoe Cafe.

But for all the talk over the years about redevelopment of Dillon’s town core, the Arapahoe Cafe owners said the town does not appear to have a clear vision of what the future might hold.

While the future may be uncertain, Pierce said he was sure of one thing: Locals are opposed to development such as a 4- or 5-star hotel. But he said the town government seems more “pro-development” than many of its residents.

“I don’t think we’re really listening. We’re hearing, but we’re not really listening. And we’re not thoughtful about what direction we’re heading,” Pierce said. “Locals don’t say they want a 5-star hotel, an indoor amphitheater and a parking garage. Yet somebody does. And there’s just confusion. It’s not real clear to us, so we said ‘let’s get out of the crosshairs.'”

Last week, the town council explored the possibility of moving the Arapahoe Cafe — yet again — to a new location in town. Skowyra, calling the building a “landmark in our town,” said even if the adored local business cannot be saved, at least a piece of Dillon history might be preserved.

Lehman noted that it is still an open question whether the structure can be moved. But both she and Pierce agreed that the building’s history should be preserved. They said the best spot for the building would be at the Dillon Marina, where the Crow’s Nest used to be.

“I think our customers would love to be near the lake,” Lehman said. “I can’t tell how many times people come in and say ‘Can I sit at a table with a view of the lake?’ We just don’t have many of them.”

While Porritt told the town council that he would donate the Arapahoe Cafe building if he bought the property, the town so far has only talked about a hypothetical possibility of relocating the structure.

Still, if a year or two down the line the town successfully relocates the building and issues a request seeking businesses to run the restaurant, Pierce and Lehman said it is possible they might apply.

“I think that the Arapahoe Cafe as we know it and as everyone knows it — this chapter — will end,” Lehman said. “As far as the future and creating it somewhere else, we’re definitely open to those discussions and to see what the future holds.”

Pierce noted, though, “It’s a long time for us to sit on the sidelines and wait.”

Arapahoe Cafe has been so central to the family’s life over the past two decades that it is hard to know exactly what is ahead, Pierce said. He recalled not being able to hire a cook when he first bought the business — so he took to the kitchen himself. 

Over the years, longtime staff have come to feel like family, and the menu grew, Pierce said. But the philosophy remained the same, he said, pointing to a sign that hung in the pub, “Good Food.”

“Personally, I’ll miss cooking,” Pierce said. “I love the cooking part of it and always have. I’ll miss the people, both our employees and our customers. They’re not our customers, they’re our guests. We’ve invited them into our home.”

For many of those customers, the loss of Arapahoe Cafe will be equally as difficult. On Monday, Clay and Dana Adams sat on the patio enjoying a meal that they didn’t know would be their last at the cafe.

Regular visitors from Parker, the couple said they’ve been to the cafe at least a dozen times. One year, Clay Adam’s mother had her 90th birthday party at the Best Western. Arapahoe Cafe catered the event.

“It’s a great, one-of-a-kind place. I didn’t know they were closing,” Clay Adams said. “Now, I’m bummed out.”

The Arapahoe Cafe may soon be closing its doors, but the building — and the family business built there — will always have a place in the town’s history. Pierce acknowledged that with the closing of the family business, a part of what makes Dillon the small mountain town that it is today may be lost.

“It’s heartbreaking. It was a very difficult decision for us to make,” Pierce said. “It was difficult for us today. It is difficult for our customers to wrap their heads around. Somewhere that they’ve come to for years and years and years isn’t going to be here next year.”