Runza Longmont location to close Sunday

LONGMONT — After this weekend, Colorado will be down to its last Runza.

The Longmont location of the Lincoln, Nebraska-based chain of restaurants, which feature Midwestern-style sandwiches with spiced ground beef, cabbage, onion and other fillings baked into a roll, will close after business hours on Sunday, Becky Perrett, director of marketing for Runza Restaurants, said in an email to BizWest.

The closure of the restaurant at 1743 Main St. will leave only one Runza location in the state, at 2204 N. Lincoln Ave. in Loveland. Another Northern Colorado Runza eatery, at 2601 S. Lemay Ave. in Fort Collins, closed in 2013.

The closure of the Longmont location “does not affect the Loveland store,” Perrett said.

The Longmont closure is the result of the sale of the 2,380-square-foot building, which broker Lorenzo Harris at the Denver office of Chicago-based Jones Lang Lasalle IP Inc. said is likely to close “around the end of the month.”

Harris told BizWest that “the buyer’s looking for a new tenant.”

Built in 2010, the building had housed a Jack in the Box restaurant, but that franchised location closed in 2017. Three years later, S&R Development LLC bought it from Jack in the Box Inc. for $1.1 million, and Runza opened there in spring 2020.

Harris would not reveal who just agreed to buy it from S&R or the purchase price. As for what will replace Runza there, he said the property could be a rare find for a new tenant because of a recent action by Longmont’s leaders.

“The City of Longmont is not allowing any new drive-thrus on Main Street unless you’re grandfathered in,” Harris said, “so this is a pretty unique opportunity for a fast-food or fast-casual restaurant or even a bank. The property’s not large enough for an In-and-Out or a Chick-fil-A, but, still, it’ll be once every decade that this chance will come up for a new group to come into the trade area with a drive-thru on Main Street.”

The first Runza restaurant was opened in 1949 in Lincoln by sister and brother Sally Everett and Alex Brening. The chain began selling franchises in 1979 and replaced car hops with drive-thru lanes in 1981. Today, most of its more than 90 locations are in Nebraska, but it also has franchised eateries in Clarinda and Creston, Iowa; Lawrence, Kansas; and Yankton, South Dakota. 

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