Harbor Inn Seafood at 3404 Wrightsboro Road has closed.
A search on Google will say as much, and its listed phone number comes up as disconnected.
As recently as last month, however, locals were touting the restaurant on social media, though that’s about as long as the business has been shut down, at least in Augusta.
“We have it under contract,” said Greg Craft, a managing partner at Birmingham, Alabama-based real estate developer Capital Growth Buchalter Inc. Since early January, the roughly 8,500 square foot building has been locked up, and is now available for another business to buy or lease, Craft said.
County property records attribute current ownership of the building and the parcel to an entity called Sea Food USA LLC, with an address in Duluth, Ga., since 2016.
Chris Fotinos expanded his family-managed Harbor Inn seafood eatery chain to Augusta in 2002, having purchased the property in November of the previous year, according to the same records.
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The chain is headquartered in Columbia, also since 2002; and has locations in Greenville, S.C. as well as Asheville and Charlotte, N.C., managed by Marina Fotinos, who also ran the Augusta location. Management at the Columbia location said that it was “not affiliated” with the Georgia site. None of the Fotinos responded for comment.
“The other group’s lease was up, from what I understand,” said Craft, as the Buchalter company is now planning to redevelop the site. Several parties have already expressed interest in the property, he said, including restaurants looking to lease it.
“The building’s pretty old,” he said. The structure was built in 1984, and once housed a Quincy’s Family Steakhouse restaurant. “I don’t think we’d use it without a major renovation.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
