By CAROL PARK
Laguna Beach’s Duane Roberts, owner of the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in Riverside, plans to open a chain of Mexican restaurants based on the historic hotel’s Las Campanas Restaurant & Cantina.
Roberts has hired R.D. Olson Construction in Irvine to build the first one in Rancho Cucamonga.
The restaurant is set to be 7,200 square feet and cost about $3 million to build. Construction on the restaurant is expected to begin this month.
Roberts hopes to develop eight more Las Campanas restaurants, including four in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
He named the original Las Campanas in recognition of the hotel’s collection of historic bells.
The Rancho Cucamonga restaurant is expected to seat up to 270 diners and employ 50 to 60 people.
The design calls for ornate windows, archways, fountains and a tiled dome with a programmable bell, similar to the carillon that rings hourly at the 239-room Mission Inn in downtown Riverside.
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Mission Inn: Roberts bought in 1992 |
Diane White of D.W. Architects designed the Rancho Cucamonga restaurant.
The original Las Campanas restaurant, serving upscale Mexican food, opened at the Mission Inn in 2002.
It employs more than 40 people and seats up to 200 diners.
Executive Chef Victor Juarez oversees the kitchen at the Las Campanas in the Mission Inn.
Roberts made his initial fortune in frozen burritos, building up and selling two frozen food companies.
These days, he’s chief executive of Newport Beach’s Entrepreneurial Corporate Group in Newport Beach, which oversees his investments in apartments, the Mission Inn and some British food companies.
Scott Megna of Entrepreneurial Hospitality Corp., a unit of Entrepreneurial Corporate Group, is overseeing Las Campanas’ rollout.
Roberts spent most of his life in the Inland Empire and moved to an ocean bluff home in Laguna Beach a few years back.
He’s still active in politics in the Inland Empire.
In 1992, Roberts paid $16 million for the landmark Mission Inn, saving the hotel from possible ruin.
Park is a staff writer with the Business Press in Ontario.
