REDDING, Calif. — A downtown restaurant, Lost Era, closed its location on 1350 Butte Street in April and the Owner, Joshua Mansfield, opened The Golden Fang at a unique spot.
Mansfield switched to the Benton Airport saying he mainly wanted to bring something new and unique to the city. The owner mentioned that the homeless population also played a role in deterring him from the downtown location.
“There was just a lot of riffraff down there for a minute, and it was hard to have a gourmet full functioning restaurant, everyone would be sitting outside and homeless would be walking up trying to pinch pockets or peeing in the alleys,” Mansfield said.
Mansfield who cooks everything himself and changes the menu every two weeks said business isn’t as good, but the airport location is much safer.
“When I was downtown we had lines out the door to where we sold out every day but [after] coming up here, most of the city doesn’t know that the actual airport has reopened yet,” said the owner.
Mansfield said that homeless people deterred some customers from wanting to come in.
“As a business owner, I always push them back and away,” Mansfield said. “But I just kinda got sick of it for a minute and let the city go in and take care of it before I came back down there.”
Mansfield said he thinks downtown has gotten more cleaned up since he closed. Saying although there were a lot of wild daysdowntown, he thinks it has more foot traffic and is ready to open a new location there.
“The development downtown has finally started so instead of being a dark gloomy space, it’s actually getting livened up,”
Mansfield is opening ‘Rusting Relics’ downtown on Nov 1.
The Golden Fang will remain open at the Benton Airpark.
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