Not a news flash: Sushi place on highway closes

It will come as no surprise to anyone that the Sushi Lounge & Steakhouse on Nevada Highway recently closed.

What may come as a surprise, if you didn’t read our Nov. 1 article on its opening, is that there was a sushi place on the highway.

I feel bad for the business owners — Danny Ye and wife E.J. — but I felt the business was doomed from the start.

I love sushi. I could eat my weight in sushi (well, maybe not), and writing this column is making me hungry.

Reporter Jack Johnson and I visited Ye and company a few months back to give the menu a try and promptly ran up a $57 bill. That was just sushi. In the world of sushi, it is not hard to do.

The selections were delicious. I’m not a food critic so I can’t use flowery words to properly describe what my palate experienced, other to say it was yummy.

But I also ate with a sense of foreboding that this was the only time I was going to eat there. Jack and I were the only customers on that early, weekday afternoon.

So it has come to pass, the sushi place at 1112 Nevada Highway has gone away and the Ye family has ridden off into the sunset, in the direction of Henderson if a sign in the window is to be believed.

What is to become of the quarter-acre lot and building now? The vacant half-acre lot to the south was purchased by O’Reilly Automotive Stores in August. It is, I’ve been told, in a tussle with the Nevada Transportation Department about driveway access.

I guess state transportation officials want to cut down on the number of access points on what is, technically, U.S. Highway 93. It seems a little overbearing to me considering I can’t remember the last time someone was hit pulling in or out of one of the businesses along the highway, especially on the north side. Of course, the argument could be made that there aren’t a lot of cars pulling in and out anyway, causing businesses to suffer.

I have always made the argument that people travel ing toward Las Vegas on the highway from Lake Mead or Arizona are not going to say, “Hey, look! (Insert type of business here) We should stop.” They are going to keep cruising. That leaves it up to locals.

When I posted that the sushi place closed on the paper’s Facebook page (Facebookcom/bouldercityreview), it started a lively discussion of what could go there next.

One suggestion was to bring Sonic back to that location. My favorite suggestion was posted by Kristi Miller who suggested a Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers franchise. Rick Larson suggested a Wendy’s. Paul Nentwig Parker suggested tearing the building down and, with the vacant lot next door, build a Target. I’m not an expert, but that would take more than an acre.

But tearing it down and promoting the empty lot may be the way to go. Even though the sushi restaurant was a dine-in establishment, it looked like a drive- thru.

Maybe it is time to scrape the lot and start new. O’Reilly paid $550,000 for the neighboring lot twice the size. Maybe it could use more land for a bigger parking lot.

One idea that is never going to happen is luring an In-N-Out Burger franchise. The traffic counts aren’t high enough, and those places need to stay busy all the time.

Not that any of this really matters in the long run. If or when the bypass it built, that stretch of highway will become deserted, Radiator Springs-style.