The recently vacated Ruby Tuesday space at Presque Isle’s Aroostook Centre Mall will soon welcome diners again.
Shogun Japanese Restaurant will move to the mall, and renovations are already underway, Aroostook Centre owner Dana Cassidy said Friday.
The hibachi grill restaurant opened last year at the Stone Ridge Event Center, just across the street, but the building is being sold. The move will bring a restaurant and bar back under the mall’s roof, where Cassidy hopes it will become a destination.
Ruby Tuesday closed permanently this fall, leaving Waterville as the chain’s only remaining Maine location amid the company’s long-term financial struggles.
“Of course, Ruby’s was a staple here for years. The bar is local [and] it’s close,” Cassidy said. “We’re working on it now daily, and hopefully in a few weeks we can have it up and going.”
A hibachi restaurant — where chefs create meals at grills surrounded by guests — was a new concept for Presque Isle. The Ruby Tuesday kitchen needs to be renovated, equipment changed out and dining spaces reconfigured, Cassidy said.
“Hibachi is specific to the food, so there’s a lot of work that we’ve been doing for the last few weeks to get the extractors and the hoods in. We need to retrofit the kitchen to accommodate a different type of food,” he said. “There’s quite a bit to it.”
Meanwhile, the Stone Ridge building is under contract, though Cassidy said he could not yet divulge the buyer.
Besides Shogun, Personal Services of Aroostook is housed at the building and will also need to move. The organization provides services and support to people with intellectual disabilities and autism.
Personal Services is looking for an appropriate space, Cassidy said.
The 23,000-square-foot building opened as Slopes Northern Maine Brewing Company in 2004, owned by two local doctors. It featured an in-house brewery, with windows in its large bar overlooking the massive copper vats, along with a large dining room with stone fireplaces.
Slopes lasted five years, closing in 2009. Its auction was the largest Keenan Auction Company had seen at the time, bringing in $225,000.
About a year later, the Crow’s Nest restaurant and bar opened there, but that closed in 2013. Cassidy has owned the building since then. A multipurpose day care facility also opened at the event center, but did not last.
Shogun has at least 10 employees on a given day, with three chefs, along with waitstaff and kitchen crews, which will all move to the new location.
It’s too soon to specify a date for opening, because renovating often means wait times for contractor availability. Cassidy will use local contractors for the work, so he’s willing to wait, he said.
Cassidy, a local developer who owns multiple businesses and properties in Presque Isle and Caribou, bought the mall in 2023. He aims to make it prosper by filling it with local businesses who aren’t dependent on big-box corporations.
The shopping center may not be teeming with the activity large urban spaces have, but it’s working, Cassidy said.
There are 36 or 37 businesses there now, compared with 15 when he bought the building, he said. The restaurant will add another destination to the lineup.
“It’s far from full and far from pulsating, and it may never be because it’s Presque Isle, Maine,” he said. “But we’re doing very well for what we have to work with.”