Square Loses Flavor As Chili’s Departs

After 15 years in Harvard Square, the popular Chili’s Grill and Bar emptied its space in a three-story red building at 114 Mount Auburn St. yesterday due to high rent and the lack of a surrounding parking lot.

As workers loaded counters into a truck, Sean Leonard, the area director of Chili’s, explained that the restaurant closed Monday after lunch because it did not fit with the chain’s national business model of “free-standing buildings in parking lots.”

“For what the operators could control the store did well,” Leonard said, while supervising the move-out. “But the rent was astronomical.”

Chili’s abrupt closing surprised patrons, students and even the landlord.

Landlord Erich H. Imhof said he did not know what would replace the eatery.

“A bar or nightclub would probably work the best,” he said.

Others were also caught off guard by the closing. Several people stopped by around lunchtime yesterday expecting the restaurant to be open.

“It must have just happened. I had lunch there last week,” said a woman accompanied by three friends, before heading off to Grendel’s Den, another longtime restaurant in the Square.

Andrew Rhodes said he stopped by Chili’s hoping for a job.

“I was thinking of transferring down here,” he said. “I worked for them in Dallas.”

Dan Luongo, a part-time inspector for the Massachusetts Transit Authority sitting on a bench across the street from Chili’s, said that he was also unaware the restaurant had closed.

“News to me,” he said. “It was always packed, especially on Fridays. It’s the downfall of no parking in Cambridge.”

Several student organizations that frequented the restaurant will now have to find an alternative place to hold group events. David J. Zimmer ’04, the director general of Harvard Model United Nations, said his organization had held several staff events on the restaurant’s second floor.

“It was good for that sort of thing,” he said.

Leonard said of Chili’s 50 restaurants in New England that this one was the only one closing. He said that the equipment in the Cambridge Chili’s was being moved to other Chili’s franchises in the Boston area.

“[We would] always be open to a location in Cambridge if we could have a free standing space,” he said.

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.