ARLINGTON — Hubb’s Pizza &Pasta will open in late January near old town Arlington, breathing new life into the former Eagle Crest restaurant at 67th Avenue NE and 211th Street NE.
The privately owned restaurant is newly renovated. The menu is filled with specialty pizzas and pasta meals with “secret recipe” sauces. Experienced restaurateur William Hubbell and general manager John Sullivan plan to develop deep roots in the community.
“We’ve already gotten such great treatment from city officials and others we’ve met in the community,” said Hubbell, who promises a friendly restaurant with great-tasting food and professional service.
“Our mantra is, ‘Great service isn’t what we think we’re giving, it’s based on what our guests think they’re getting.’ We want our customers, whom we consider our guests, to really feel like guests,” he said.
Hubbell and Sullivan, with 27 and 35 years in the restaurant business respectively, know a lot about making guests feel welcome, as well as how to make their menu welcoming. There will be a wide selection of pizzas and tastefully prepared pasta meals.
Because he knows price is important, particularly in today’s economy, Hubbell plans to offer lunches for less than $10 and dinner items prices so that families feel they can afford to eat out more often than once a month.
“I’m originally from Silverdale and I love small towns like Arlington,” Hubbell said. “We’re excited to be here and plan to have good, affordable food in a comfortable environment. My wife, Debbie, and I raised three boys and we know how expensive it can be to take a family to a restaurant, so we want to make it attractive.”
The restaurant will have new booths and carpeting, a special dining area near the giant river rock fireplace, warm colors inside and Wi-Fi throughout the building. In the spring, Hubbell will add new landscaping and perhaps paint the outside, too.
Hubbell said his restaurant business concept is to make his own pizza dough, sauces and dressings, to buy local products and produce, and use premium mozzarella cheese and other fresh ingredients.
About 40 percent of his pizzas will be take-out, he said. He hasn’t decide yet if he’ll offer home pizza deliveries.
At first, the restaurant will be open from 4 to 10 p.m. for dinners. Hubbell said he’ll then add lunch meals with expanded hours, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. If there are enough customer requests, he may do breakfasts, too, although not necessarily on the weekends, particularly Sunday, since he likes to let employees to attend morning church services.
“We’ll be hiring new staff for the restaurant but we don’t necessarily need people with 10 years or more of experience. We have our own training standards and we’ll spend time with our employees,” he said.
Hubbell’s extensive restaurant career began soon after he graduated from Washington State University, landing a job at Charlie’s at Shilshole in Seattle where he also met his future wife, Debbie. She was a waitress at the time while she was studying to be a teacher. Her father, Mark Mitchell, owned Charlie’s. Later, Mitchell and Hubbell bought the Drift On Inn Roadhouse in Shoreline, which now also a casino.
“Later on we bought property north of there and opened Club Hollywood. It was around that time we had more than 500 employees,” Hubbell said. “That’s also where I met John Sullivan, who’s now my general manager in Arlington.”
For a time, Hubbell left the restaurant business to do consulting work for a variety of firms, but he said he found he “really missed the interaction I had with people in the restaurant business. It’s in my blood. I found this new opportunity and here I am. I’ll be working on the site with John.”
Sullivan said that even after 35 years in the restaurant business there’s nothing else he would rather do.
“I grew up in Seattle, then went to Montana, Utah and came back here. Met my wife in the restaurant business, too, and met William 10 or 12 years ago. I’d already opened restaurants in Ballard and Edmonds and I had a good relationship with him, so when he asked me I decided to come to Arlington.”
Hubbell said he plans to make a considerable investment in the Arlington community not only by establishing the restaurant but also by supporting sports teams, charitable nonprofit groups and schools.
He said the Arlington opportunity came at the right time.
Eagle Crest’s previous owner, Ray Thorsen, had sold The Village Restaurant in Marysville several years ago to retire. But he felt the urge to get back into the food and hospitality business and built the Eagle Crest Restaurant in Arlington in 2004.
In early 2010, Thorsen closed Eagle Crest. In August 2011, Mark Thygesen, of the Seattle real estate office of Marcus and Millistaff, reported the firm had sold the building to Limantzakis Properties LLC of Seattle.
John Limantzakis, a native of Greece, had learned the restaurant business working at Seattle’s famous waterfront Edgewater Inn. He later opened Latitude 47 on Lake Union before turning to real estate and stock investing in recent years. A lifelong friend of Limantzakis was a fellow Greek restaurateur: William Hubbell.
“I’ve been a friend of the (Limantzakis) family my entire life,” Hubbell said. “When he heard I wanted to get out of my business consulting work and back into the restaurant business, he told me about the Eagle Crest opportunity and I leased it from him.”
Hubbell said he’s excited to be in Arlington, loves the community and hopes that once he’s established Hubb’s Pizza and Pasta, he can open more of his “new concept” restaurants elsewhere in Snohomish County.
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