Laramie lost another restaurant on Wednesday when Shari's Cafe and Pies shut down after nearly 33 years in the Gem City.

Michael Kiriazis, vice president of marketing at Shari's, says the lease for the building had run out and it would have taken more money than the building was worth to upgrade the restaurant and continue operating.

"The lease was up," says Kiriazis.  "It didn't make financial sense for us to try to renew it, because it would've been basically rebuilding that entire structure."

Kiriazis also says the restaurant's location in the Gateway Plaza is not as conducive to strong sales as it once was.

"The other part of this whole story is that it seemed that when we built that building thirty years ago, all the business was in that area," says Kiriazis. "Since then, all of that business, restaurant, commercial activity has moved up more by the stadium, to the other part of town, and left the business area that we originally built in as kind of a ghost town."

Kiriazis says Shari's has no plans to close other restaurants in Wyoming.

"We love Laramie," says Kiriazis. "We might look around for something else there but right now it's just time to close that store and move on."

 

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