By JAMES FINK
jfink@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1611

The Bijou Grille, an anchor of Buffalo's Theater District, is on the verge of signing a new lease that will keep the restaurant open for another 10 years.

Owners Michael Militello and his sister Bea and brother Bobby said they have signed a memorandum of understanding with the City of Buffalo to keep their Main Street operation open for lunch and dinner well into the next decade. It will mark its 20th anniversary this month as part of the annual "Curtain Up!" celebration.

"We are very fortunate to have them in the district," said Michael Schmand, Buffalo Place Inc. executive director. "Bea and Michael know their customers and treat them well. They are a family-run business and are very good at running their business."

At any given lunch hour, the 130-seat Bijou is filled with a potpourri of downtown workers enjoying salads, sandwiches, daily specials and specialty pizzas. By late afternoon, it shifts gears for theatergoers looking to grab a meal before a performance at Shea's Performing Arts Center or the Irish Classical Theater.

"Without a place like this, a lot of people heading to Shea's would eat in the suburbs instead of downtown Buffalo," Bea Militello said. "But we are blessed with some very loyal customers, and that says a lot."

Her brother Michael, meanwhile, also runs the Sonoma Grille in Amherst. He is well-known as a Western New York restaurant and development consultant.

"Twenty years? That's the longest I've ever run a restaurant," Militello said. "I mean, I only ran Mulligan's (a Hertel Avenue restaurant and nightspot) for 17 years, and that seemed like a lifetime to me."

That the Militellos took over the Bijou was merely happenstance. Michael ran into Buffalo attorney Paul Cambria, who actually opened the Bijou, and a quick conversation between the longtime friends led to a transfer of ownership.

"Even though it was a decidedly different Main Street and Theater District, I understood the dynamics of the street. And from an entrepreneurial sense, I knew there was something here," Militello said.

At the time, the neighboring Market Arcade complex was really just a facade being propped up. Main Street had boarded-up storefronts. Shea's was in the process of being stabilized, both financially and operationally. Chippewa Street was a red-light district. And Key Center didn't exist.

Yet Militello said he saw promise.

To help re-introduce the Theater District, especially to suburbanites, he did such things as hire the Erie County Sheriff's Department Mounted Division to patrol the street on horseback. The Bijou underwrote decorative lighting and created a Friday night series of live concerts in front of the restaurant.

His strategy worked.

"The key was understanding what could happen," Militello said.

Not that there weren't economic speed bumps along the way. The closing of Studio Arena Theatre hurt - Bea Militello estimated that its closing cost her family's restaurant 25 percent of its weekly business.

On the bright side, however, the Militellos said they welcome the return of vehicular traffic to the 600 block of Main Street, which houses the Bijou and Shea's. The work is expected to start next spring and will see one lane of traffic - north and south - return to the downtown pedestrian mall, correcting an urban planning faux pas from the early 1980s.

"I hope traffic returns and returns soon," Michael Militello said. "It will be a boost for everyone."