City Council votes to demolish derelict Comfort Café
After summer storms flooded Comfort Café in 2021, the owners of the pay-what-you-can diner in Leon Valley initially hoped to rebuild.
But the damage caused by the flood proved too great, and owners Teri and Rosie Lopez sold it and never returned.
Two years later, Comfort Café’s original restaurant on Bandera Road serves as a canvas for graffiti and has become too much of a nuisance to keep, according to the city of Leon Valley.
On Tuesday, City Council voted unanimously to tear down the property on 5616 Bandera Road. The costly demolition is an estimated $68,000. The city’s repeated attempts to reach the property’s new owner proved unsuccessful.
It’s owned by Adam Schiller’s Cay Paso LLC. Schiller is also the vice president of brokerage for Valcor, a commercial real estate developer, according to the company’s website.
Comfort Café moved into the 73-year-old building in 2019, and funds from the eatery help provide treatment efforts through Serenitystar, a Smithville-based recovery center. The owners opened a second restaurant at Los Patios, at 2015 NE Loop 410, in 2021.
The July 2021 flood wiped out the building’s northwest corner. The inside was flooded in more than 4 feet of water and destroyed.
Shortly after the flood, Comfort Café had received an a deluge of support from the community. Later that summer, Yelp donated $10,000 to the restaurant to help it rebuild. Owners Teri and Rosie Lopez said they were waiting on the insurance appraisal to determine whether they’d rebuild the the location or find a new spot for the popular restaurant. But six months later, the property was sold to Schiller.
Schiller and his representatives did not attend Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
“Basically, the building has fallen into disrepair,” said Michael Naughton, the city’s fire chief.
Anything of value — copper wire, stainless steel and compressor pumps from the air conditioning unit — has been stripped from the property, Naughton said. Unhoused people moved in and caused “major fires.”
After repeated unsuccessful attempts to reach Schiller, the city paid $3,000 to secure the building.
“It lasted about a week before the boards were torn down and people were living inside it again,” Naughton said.
He added: “Not only is it dilapidated, people are dumping couches, and truck loads of stuff are just dropped off there.”
Mayor Chris Riley gasped as images of the building appeared on a television screen: “Oh my gosh.”
Naughton said the building has not been structurally sound since the flood and that any firefighting effort has been done from the outside to keep crews safe.
“But I do worry about the people who get in there and can’t get out,” Naughton said. “There are holes all over the building, but if it’s dark, and something blocks their way, it’s a hazard.”
If the property owner fails to remedy all violations, the building is expected to to demolished on May 1, City Manager Crystal Caldera told the Express-news.
Should that happen, the city of Leon Valley will place a lien on the property to help recover the cost of the demolition, Caldera said.