Cafe at Adele's restaurant, property still for sale in Carson City

Eleven months ago, Charlie and Karen Abowd announced that they would be putting their restaurant, Cafe at Adele's, and the historic Mansard-roofed, Comstock Lode-era Victorian home it is situated in at 1112 N. Carson Street, up for sale.

That's still the plan, Charlie Abowd said, but the couple is in no hurry to sell.

"We don't need to sell," he said. "We want to sell."

Abowd said that while he and Karen have had interest shown in both the real property and the business, the right buyer scenario hasn't presented itself yet.

"I'm a picky seller," he said. "Both of us are."

The Abowds are in a good position as property and business owners who want to sell, but don't have to. They can wait to accept the most attractive offer.

"I would be less than honest if I said we haven't had people throw darts at us," Charlie said. "But they didn't meet the litmus test in my eyes."

That doesn't mean the Abowds are a hard to buy from.

Charlie Abowd said he and Karen are open to multiple scenarios, including selling the business separate from the real property.

"I'm open to just about anything," he said. "Anything and everything is possible."

Ideally, Abowd said he'd like to find a buyer who is as vested in the restaurant business as he and his family have been for the past four decades in Carson City.

"My best scenario would be that somebody would buy the business and the property, has a passion for the business, that wants to keep it open as a fine dining establishment, and put their own brand to it," he said.

Abowd said he would even entertain sharing with a new restaurant owner some of his family's recipes that have become a part of the Adele's legacy in the Nevada capital.

"I'd certainly be willing to share recipes," he said. "If they want to have some smatterings of the historic part of the 40 years, that's something I would be amicable to."

What the Abowds don't want, he said, is to end up as landlords of the vintage 4,490 square foot property, located at the corner of West John and North Carson streets, to a new tenant.

"My least favorite option would be to lease the property where I would be the landlord to an operator," Abowd said. "It would take a very strong operator for me to step into a landlord situation."

That said, though, the Abowds are open to operating their business as tenants to a new landlord in the event the real property sells before the business does.

"An investor may want to buy the property," Abowd said. "In that case, they would have to have an operator.

"Depending upon the terms, that might be something I may be interested in," he added. "I may lease back from them."

Selling the business separate from the real property may not be the ideal situation for the Abowds, Charlie said, but there is an advantage to unloading the real estate ahead of the business.

"I am interested in selling separately," he said. "That scenario relieves a lot of the financial pressures that I deal with, and that any small business deals with."

Selling the real estate first would actually give the Abowds some breathing room, he said.

It would also eliminate the challenges of finding the right buyer who wants both the property and the restaurant.

"One of the problems with selling the business and the building is that we get a lot of interest from outside of the area," he said. "They say they want to buy the name Adele's, but once they start doing the research, they don't know if it's something they want to step into."

Assuming new ownership of a local icon in the Nevada restaurant industry could be tricky for an entrepreneur trying to put his or her own footprint into Carson City.

Many times it doesn't work out, Abowd said, and ends up bad both for the new owners and the established business.

"When we first stepped into this, as optimistic as I was, it soon became obvious that what I thought of as a heavy asset, because of the history and reputation of the restaurant, turned into a liability," he said.

Interests that have approached the Abowds about the sale of the business did not follow through, Charlie said, because of the risk involved in taking over a beloved name that a community has embraced since the late 1970s.

"A dining destination that's been a driving force for 40 years and all of sudden changes kind of intimidates them," he said. "These people know that, but they're not foolish enough to think that it doesn't have a value, and they don't know if they would be comfortable enough to live with that."

Abowd said he and his family ran Adele's unconventionally for four decades; a way of doing business that, he says, may not have been the best way to operate an establishment.

Yet, it is one that has endeared many to the Adele's name over the years.

"No one's crazy enough to do this like we've been doing it for 40 years," he said. "There are better ways to run a restaurant than the way we did."

But if there is someone out there as passionate about community and dining as the Abowds have been, Charlie said, then they are welcome to it.

"I think it would be foolhardy to do it," he said. "But if someone wants to buy the name Adele's and they are up to the challenge, then more power to them."

The Adele's property is currently listed by NAI Alliance in Carson City for $1.2 million.