Canyon Lodge Restaurant to close

Canyon Lodge American Grill at Ben Brown’s Aliso Creek Inn and Golf Course will close at 3 p.m. Jan. 30.

Restaurant employees were informed of the closure Tuesday by inn and golf course General Manager Ned Snavely.

“The restaurant as we know it will be gone ‘for now,’ in quotes, as of Feb. 1,” said Councilman Kelly Boyd, who takes special interest in the resort as a descendant of the settlers who homesteaded Aliso Creek in the 1800s.

Snavely announced the decision Thursday in a news release to the Coastline Pilot.

“Aliso Creek Inn and Golf Course announced today that the Canyon Lodge restaurant in its current operating format as a lunch and dinner restaurant will be closed. It will reopen to provide a facility for group catering and special events.

“We appreciate the support from the community and those customers who have been loyal to the Canyon Lodge through the years. We look forward to serving business, social and private groups in this facility.

“Golfers will be served by an enhanced, refined snack bar and a seasonal barbecue grill located adjacent to the Pro Shop.”

Snavely’s announcements to the staff and the public came amid a series of storms that have pummeled Laguna this past week.

Severe storms have wreaked havoc in the past when Aliso Creek overflowed its banks and flooded the property.

“We are doing A-OK,” Snavely said. “We’ve lost a tree or two, but the important thing is that no one has been hurt.

“Our gorgeous canyon will be that much better as we go forward thanks to nature’s offerings.”

Snavely has been general manager of the facility since only 2004, but he has seen photographs of previous floods.

“This reminds me more of 2004 than 1998,” he said. “Of course, we are more dependent on what comes down from Cook’s Corner than what happens here,” he said, referring to the tributaries that feed Aliso Creek.

The inn was built by Ben Brown in the 1950s and owned by his widow, Violet, until she sold it to a partnership of Athens Group and Montage Hotels and Resorts, for which Snavely worked.

Plans to enlarge the inn and develop condominiums on the site, vehemently opposed by Village Laguna and the South Laguna Civic Assn., were in the works when the economy went south and the project was halted.

The Coastline Pilot was first advised Monday of the restaurant closure in an e-mail from a member of the restaurant wait staff.

“Sad news for a Laguna tradition,” Jayne Ackerlind wrote.

To make lunch or dinner reservations before the restaurant closes, call (949) 499-2663.

The restaurant opens at 11 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday and at 10 a.m. Sunday.