If you build it…

Do you actually remember the Alhambra? It’s been over thirty years since the elegant, old movie theater was torn down to build a Safeway. But the theater’s frusteratingly quiet death was a poetic lesson to the city of Sacramento: destroying architectural heritage won’t defy the occasional slam that Sac’s just a strip mall people drive through on the way to the bay.

Local restaurateurs Fred and Matt Haines understand this. Their plans to turn the old Orbit gas station into a retro burger joint further the Midtown restaurant scene’s independent spirit. Just across Midtown, The Firestone Building’s revamp by 1531 L Street Developers LLC is at once a unique innovation and yet another corporate let down.

It’s been a long time since the wacky, star-shaped roof of the Orbit Gas station on 29th and P streets shaded customers. Fred and Matt Haines are about to change that. The successful restaurateurs behind the 33rd Street Bistro chain and Riverside Clubhouse are transforming the old station into Suzie Burgers. Sure, Sacramento doesn’t need a new burger joint. But it won’t exactly get one. The old Suzie Burger chain greased Sacramento spoons near Executive Airport, and across from Broadway DMV, until 1986.

“When we were growing up, we all lived on Suzie Burgers,” said Fred Haines. “We needed to bring it back. It’s a simple, down to earth burger. It’s hard to explain. It’s seared and very old school. There were no big artisan breads back then; the way they prepared it made it a great burger.”

The Haines brothers aren’t content to let just anyone cook this “great” burger. They’ve enlisted Benny Ogata, the son of namesake Suzie and her husband, to manage the new restaurant’s kitchen and replicate the original recipes he cooked with his parents.

“I didn’t realize, until I got out of the business, how many customers we had,” said Ogata, who has since cooked at Tokyo Fros, Dragonfly and 33rd Street Bistro in El Dorado Hills. “I’d run into people I didn’t even know and as soon as they heard Suzie, they’d say, ‘You’re the guy who had Suzie. We really miss your burgers.”

Nostalgic Sacramentans will get their timeless burgers with a brand new twist: the “drive up” dinner. Customers can order homemade hamburgers, Philly cheese steak sandwiches, hot dogs, fries, shakes, fresh squeezed lemonade, and chocolate-dipped ice cream cones; and have them delivered straight to the car window. Indoor and outdoor seating will also be available when the café opens in December.

Just down the grid from the Suzie project, The Firestone Building also faces a revamp. While a second-floor lounge by nightlife visionary Mason Wong advances Sacramento’s exciting evolution into a big city, plans for a California Pizza Kitchen on the iconic first-floor corner of 16th and L streets fizzle to a dull finish. That’s right, the king of franchised California cuisine will be the centerpiece in one of Sacramento’s old architectural gems. 1531 L Street Developers LLC (the joint venture of Metro Properties’ Ken Fahn and Mark Cordano of The Cordano Co.) kicked off the project after the City of Sacramento Preservation Commission approved it on August 1.

“We had a lot of interested parties and we were very careful with our tenant mix,” said Fahn of the entire project, which also includes a promising, family-run DeVere’s Irish Pub and chain steakhouse called Fleming’s. “We think that CPK is, for casual dining and affordable dining, the best…even though they’re a chain…It’s good for people coming down to see a show at the community center, and has a really great kids menu. It’s a family-type place.”

The California Pizza Kitchen chain might be a success story, boasting 210 restaurants spread across the globe since 1985. And the Arden Mall location is often crowded. But in a space neighbored by Barnes and Noble, a United Artists movie theater, and Best Buy, CPK is right at home. In a unique building like the Firestone—with its regal, yellow columns; its etched molding that hints at a bygone era of attention to detail for the sake of detail; its giant veranda of a driveway that once gleamed proud from the corner and made tune-up seekers feel like royalty—CPK stands out like a McDonalds in Italy. It’s a strange bedfellow for Sacramento’s increasingly independent and creative restaurant scene.

One the other hand, Mason Wong’s new lounge could be great for Sacramento, as Fahn and Cordano predict. Wong’s current nightlife empire at the 15th and L streets complex (which includes The Park, Mason’s Restaurant, and Ma Jong’s Asian Diner) defies Sacramento’s cow town reputation with a snap of blingin’ fingers. It’s not for everyone, but nightlife options are what make big cities tick. Partiers without a knock-off Gucci bag to flaunt might find something appealing in Wong’s wine and small plates lounge, slated for the Firestone building’s industrial loft space.

“Atmospherically, its going to be a little more casual,” said Wong. “Not as modern as what the park is…[It is] leaning toward a little bit more of that organic cement and wood and that kind of flavor to the atmosphere.”

The Orbit Station and the Firestone Building might not rival The Alhambra in elegance, but both are unique buildings worth keeping on the Sacramento landscape. As former institutions for the automobile—an evil now measured in pollution and politics—the Orbit and the Firestone are more fairly suited to become eateries. Transforming the Orbit station into a family burger joint as retro as the building itself is the perfect preservation. The Firestone Building’s crowning corner could be so much more than a California Pizza Kitchen. But Wong’s new lounge and the family-run Irish pub should help carry Sacramento’s evolution into a big city that doesn’t have to go to bed on time.