Top Story — June: Pattigeorge’s new owner: ‘It’s my destiny’

You can count on this, says Richard Gonzmart, president of the Tampa-based Columbia Restaurant Group and now owner of the shuttered Pattigeorge’s Restaurant property on Longboat Key:

With whatever restaurant he develops on that mid-Key Bayfront site, “It will be one of a kind. It won’t be anything we do now,” he said Tuesday as he awaited word that his company’s purchase of Pattigeorge’s was completed.

“I believe in being a good neighbor. I don’t envision this being a monstrosity,” he added.

But here is what it will have: “It’s going to be Florida food. Real food that everyone will enjoy,” Gonzmart said. “I don’t want to give away what I’m going to do. But there will be great seafood and great hormone-free beef from Myakka City” — a reference to the beef his company buys from Jim and Renee Strickland, owners of the Strickland Ranch and Gonzmart family friends for three generations.

And it will have homemade ice cream. “We make all of our ice cream,” he said.

Gonzmart oversees a restaurant empire that includes four of the historic Columbia Restaurants; two Columbia cafes; Cha Cha Coconuts next to the St. Armands Circle Columbia; and two recent additions — Ulele in downtown Tampa and Goody Goody, the restoration of a Tampa restaurant landmark expected to open in August.

Now add to the list Pattigeorge’s — although it will have a new name. “I’m still thinking about it,” Gonzmart said of the name.

It was an unexpected purchase.

The son of one of his Columbia Restaurant vendors in Tampa showed Gonzmart a flier about two months ago, a listing for the sale of Pattigeorge’s. Gonzmart remembered advice from his father, Cesar Gonzmart: “Never turn down the opportunity to build on the water in Sarasota.”

“I immediately went there,” Gonzmart said.

It was 2 p.m. mid-week; the restaurant wasn’t open. Gonzmart remembers everyone’s advice about Pattigeorge’s: “It was too far north (on Longboat Key); too seasonal; the building too old. They told me everything that couldn’t be done.”

When he pulled into the parking lot: “I immediately fell in love.”

He toured the inside. “I looked at the carpet, and then I looked beyond what I was looking at,” he said. You know what he wasn’t saying; the 54-year-old building needed new life, new investment.

A few days later, Gonzmart took his wife and daughter to see Pattigeorge’s. Said Gonzmart: “They thought I was crazy. That was a good sign.”

Gonzmart declined to disclose the purchase price of Pattigeorge’s, acquired from longtime owners Tommy and Jaymie Klauber. But he knows that what he paid is just the start of a much bigger investment.

Gonzmart has a lot of ideas swirling — such as building a glass-floored structure over the boat ramp next to the existing building. He envisions installing sea lights under water so they attract fish while guests eat, drink and watch the fish. “I’m just fascinated by fish,” Gonzmart said.

Expect the new restaurant to be one-story, without the live-in apartment upstairs where Klauber and Pattigeorge’s founders, Patti and George Neofotis, lived when they owned and operated the restaurant. And expect an outdoor dining deck — subject, of course, to town approval.

The final version of what is to come, Gonzmart said, will depend to a large degree on his team of architects and engineers and, as always, on what the town of Longboat Key will permit.

“My task now is to meet with the architect next week,” Gonzmart said. He said he expects redevelopment to take at least a year and a half.

Gonzmart recently turned 63 and went through a prostate procedure. He has been working in the family business since age 6. Over the past 20 years, he said, he and his family have invested millions upgrading and updating their Columbia flagships.

And in the past four years, Gonzmart has taken on the development of Ulele, a downtown Tampa restaurant that has a brewery attached to it. He purchased the Goody Goody restaurant and is near the completion of its renovation. And before Pattigeorge’s, he recently purchased a former macaroni restaurant behind the Ybor City Columbia, with plans to take it back to Sicilian roots.

Why all the new ventures at age 63? “I’m crazy,” Gonzmart said. “I feel like I’m in my 30s. It’s my destiny. It’s something I have to do. It’s something my father asked me to do. It’s for the next generation. That’s why.”