“I’m embarrassed by the amount of coverage, I’m just mortified,” said Cheryl Rust, owner of Le Garage, after she announced that after 40 years, she would be closing the restaurant at 15 Water Street in Wiscasset on April 30. “The success of the restaurant is shared with so many people, past and current, that it’s overwhelming and a little embarrassing that the spotlight is on me.”

In its first two years, the restaurant overlooking the harbor was seasonal, but Rust’s concern for her employees led her to make it a year-round enterprise in its third year. At first, the employees seemed happy to be going off to work down south, in Texas or Florida, during the winter months, but eventually, she realized they would want to put down roots in one place. “They weren’t gypsies, they’d want to have families and permanent homes,” she said. So in the off-season of the second year, she had the restaurant insulated and a heating system put in. “I couldn’t have done any of that if I had had children and grandchildren to care for and put through college. But I’m an old maid with a cat on my lap, so I could make choices that would have been far more complex for other people.”

The gambit worked. There have been generations of customers from the same families, and generations of employees from the same family, three generations of one family at one point. “Two of them still work there,” she said.

When the news got out that the restaurant will close, those customers came in. On Saturday, Rust said the restaurant had to start turning people away. “We were completely, completely packed. It was crazy in the kitchen, it was crazy in the bar, and crazy on the floor,” she said. “It was like a celebration.”

Rust didn’t plan to become a restaurateur; her background was in psychology and business, and her work in the nonprofit sector has been around the issues of health, behavioral health and aging, as well as a stint as chair of the United Way, Midcoast Maine, in Bath, and the Maine Community Foundation, where she has tried to assist in some of its Lincoln County initiatives. She served on the merger council under the Baldacci administration to combine the Department of Human Services with the Department of Behavioral Health; they became the Department of Health and Human Services. 

She was also interested in employer-employee relations. She realized it would help to have some experience with employees and their needs. When she bought the restaurant from her parents, she thought something great could be done with the site. “It’s an amazing industry, and it connects you with a tremendous diversity, if you keep your menu broad and accessible.  It’s been a great run, but there is no question in my mind that the location, the whole place, deserves someone with some vibrancy and new energy,” she said.

Because she doesn’t have a family, she was happy to throw her excess energy – and her money – into trying new things that might change the industry. “I haven’t had a full blown vacation since 10 days in 1986,” she said. “But then, I live in Vacationland.” She takes long weekends paddling with friends, and other activities get her out into the heart of the state.

For 17 years, the restaurant’s employees had full-year health insurance, until Obamacare came into being and they could obtain their own insurance. They had jobs throughout the winter, even when it was not economically feasible for the restaurant to remain open. But Rust said a new owner would have to consider other options, perhaps a blended use of the site, such as a cooking school in the winter and a seasonal restaurant. “Somehow, somewhere, we should also connect with our historic roots on the Sheepscot River, which is the deepest natural riverbed north of Boston. There are so many opportunities that just aren’t being realized.”

Whoever buys the restaurant will need new energy and vision, and will want to work with the town to try to solve some of the issues around the harbor, Rust said. “My boating friends say that they like to have a port where they can use clean bathrooms and showers, and have access to washers and dryers. There are a lot of issues that would make the harbor friendlier to people coming up the river.” She said a new owner with fresh energy might be able to work with other business owners to establish new ways to use the harbor as a transit hub of sorts. “South Portland has been trying to figure out a way to get a rail spur to its harbor. We already have a rail spur.” Such things could coalesce and galvanize the community and create many new job opportunities, she said.

While April 30 is the last day Le Garage is open to the public, there will be a private event on Saturday, May 6. Then the restaurant will remain closed, until it’s someone else’s. “It’s hard, some of our employees have been here for more than 30 years, but I think they’ll all be fine. A couple of them have interviewed and will be stepping right into new jobs. They’re all terrific and I imagine they’ll all have job offers soon. Change is disrupting, but it can also be energizing, and it causes people to review their choices and decide if this is the direction they want to be heading in,” she said.