Rapidan Dam Store may serve customers again in temporary location this fall

Loyal customers of the Rapidan Dam Store may soon have its famous pies once again — just at a different location. 

CBC Fisher Group — a Mankato-based commercial real estate company — confirmed the Hruska Family and Kyle Smith of the Tailwind Group, a real estate development group that owns the former Wagon Wheel Cafe on South Front Street, signed a lease agreement for the Rapidan Dam Store to operate temporarily from the space, perhaps as early as this fall.

That’s pending is final approval from the city of Mankato and the health department. 

Dain Fisher, commercial real estate agent and a long-time family friend of the Hruskas, searched for restaurant spaces and said the Wagon Wheel Cafe seemed like “the right fit.” 

“I made a recommendation on the Wagon Wheel to the owner and [Kyle] was super receptive,” Fisher said.

“In fact, he said he had already reached out to the Hruskas and he had let them know that he would be open to that. I took it a step further and brought it to the Dam Store … the Hruska Family, and just said, ‘Hey, this would be kind of what it would look like,’ and Kyle was very supportive and we drew up a contract.”

The Hruska Family lost the Rapidan Dam Store after the Blue Earth River severely eroded the riverbank because of flooding in June, causing a county-owned shed and the Hruska family home to topple into the water. Blue Earth County ended up buying the Rapidan Dam Store and demolishing the building because of the unstable conditions caused by erosion. 

Fisher and Hruska grew up together on the Blue Earth River and spent many summers at the Rapidan Dam Store. 

“There’s just a lot of memories in there,” he said. “A lot of the areas that we mushroom hunted, all the banks we went fishing on… all those memories just kind of got swept away. We watched the Dam Store get torn down and so the whole thing became evident that [the Hruskas] were going to need a lot of help and they have gotten, I think, a tremendous outpouring from the community.”

As of Wednesday, A GoFundMe set up by a relative of the Hruskas had raised $87,040. 

David Hruska, co-owner of the Rapidan Dam Store, said there’s still a couple steps left in the process before they can start serving customers again. The earliest Hruska anticipated opening could be “early fall” but he cautioned that’s if it “all goes smoothly” with permit applications, inspections and renovations. 

“It’s still a ways down the road, a lot of things still have to happen, so don’t want people to get their hopes up and then get them shattered if something were to happen, just you never know,” Hruska said. “I mean, we didn’t think our house and our business was going to disappear in a couple days, either. So lots of things can happen.”

If all goes to plan, the Wagon Wheel Cafe would maintain the vibe and feel of the original Rapidan Dam Store, Hruska said. Though, there’d be a few modifications to keep things up to code in the new location. 

“We saved everything that was in the building we saved out of the [original] store,” he added. “So, we got the bar. We got all the booths and tables, all that stuff. So, we’ll still have a feel of the dam store when we open a new place. That’s our goal.”

Ultimately, Hruska said they hope to return to the original Rapidan Dam site in the future—though they don’t know when. 

“That’s our plan,” he said. “That’s been our plan from the start. We don’t know the timeframe on that either. That’s really hard to predict, because now you have Mother Nature work with you there, too.”

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