UPDATE, 5:43: The story has been updated to clarify that the restaurant will serve dinners through Saturday, June 28, with Sunday being an open house.

Update: 7:30:

Student Prince Cafe and the Fort Dining Room: Regulars mourn passing of an era, hope that sale saves cornerstone of Springfield

SPRINGFIELD — The landmark Student Prince Cafe & The Fort Dining Room will close on Monday, June 30, and the consummate downtown meeting place will reopen in a month, probably with new owners.

"We have not made money here in a while. My sister and I are tired, and we want to get out," managing partner Rudi Scherff said Monday afternoon.

July is a month that the restaurant never made money anyway, Scherff said.

Scherff said that there are several prospective buyers for the 79-year-old German restaurant, including one who is qualified, enthusiastic and met with bankers Monday. He said much of his staff knows already, and a number of regular customers have known for some time.

The restaurant has a staff of 79 and a seating capacity of 240.

Reasons for the sale, Scherff said, include a combination of age, declining business and the specter of a years-long project to rebuild Interstate 91 potentially snarling downtown traffic.

"We know Interstate 91 is coming," Scherff said. Ten percent of The Fort's business comes from Connecticut residents, he said.

"So if they come to eat twice a week now, they will come out once a week or even less during construction," he said.

He said business is also down because fewer people go downtown to shop or be entertained. Reports of crime in Springfield make some reluctant to make the trip, he said.

Lunch business, often dependent on office workers, is also off despite The Fort's reputation as the place where Springfield's business deals get done.

"People who were in the office five days a week are in the office two or three days a week," he said. "Offices have minimum secretarial staffing these days. That hurts."

Scherff closed the storefront deli on Main Street three and a half years ago, citing a decline in lunch traffic.

"I'll miss the customers," Scherff said. "I'll miss the routine. But I'll enjoy not having all the responsibility."

He and his sister, Barbara B. Meunier, are managing partners. Their brother, Peter Scherff, has an ownership stake as well and is famous for heading into the woods each December to gather greenery for Christmas garlands.

"I'm of retirement age. I have my own health problems," Rudi Scherff said.

The Fort is the last of downtown's retail and restaurant institutions that anchored Springfield business for the last century. Johnson's Bookstore closed in 1998. The big department stores Forbes & Wallace and Steiger's are also long gone.

The Tower Square office and business complex a block away is filled with office workers and just gained a University of Massachusetts satellite location. But its retail offerings have declined over the years, today focusing on conveniences such as a CVS drugstore and fast-casual sandwich shop along with a few bank branches.

Paul Schoeder opened the Student Prince Cafe — named for the Sigmund Romberg operetta about Heidelberg student life — on Sept. 24, 1935. He was eventually joined in the venture by his partner, Erna Sievers. The Fort dining room opened a decade later on Feb. 18, 1946.

The expanded dining room featured stained-glass windows crafted by German artisans from New Jersey. Steeped in Springfield tradition, The Fort — which drew its name from a fort built at the site by John Pynchon, son of Springfield founder William Pynchon, in 1660 — even used placemats featuring a drawing of City Hall, the Campanile and Symphony Hall, along with a downtown street map that seemed to invite visitors to walk off their meals with a downtown tour.

Rudi Scherff and Barbara B. Meunier's father, the late Rupprecht Scherff, came to the United States from Germany in 1934 and began working at the Student Prince in 1949 after working at the old Highland Hotel and serving in the U.S. Army in World War II. The elder Scherff took over the establishment with Margarethe Silinski upon the death of Sievers in 1961. Scherff assumed sole ownership of the restaurant when Silinski retired a decade later.

Rupprecht Scherff, who waited on Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1934 and John F. Kennedy in Springfield in 1959, died in 1996. Family members said he worked a staggering 114 hours each week at the restaurant until 1994, when he reduced his hours — to an average of 40 to 45.

In 2008, Gourmet Magazine listed The Fort as one of the "21 Legendary Restaurants You Must Visit." The restaurant is also known for its extensive stein collection, which started with about 20 pieces and has grown to one of the largest such collections in the United States. A group of "trusted employees" hand-wash the collection twice a year, according to the restaurant's website.

Rudi and Barbara continued as owner-operators of the restaurant following Rupprecht's death.

Over the years, annual highlights at the restaurant have included its Yuletide garlands and bows, made-from-scratch eggnog, duck and veal shank each Christmas; its annual game dinners in February featuring ostrich and yak; and the Maifest each spring, during which the dining room is festooned with flowered garlands.

Rudi Scherff has often reminisced about the days when the restaurant stayed open extra late on Black Friday as a respite for harried clerks from the downtown department stores.

Some servers have worked at the restaurant for close to 30 years, and a number have worked there for 10 years or longer.

"We've never felt a real need to change," said Meunier in a 2010 interview for the restaurant's 75th anniversary. "We feel that the look is part of the appeal."

Partners for Community, an umbrella group that includes the New England Farm Workers Council, bought 1610-1626 Main St. — the 66,000 square-foot home of The Fort and The Student Prince Restaurant — in November 2011 for $2 million.

In October 2013, Scherff aided in the opening of the 1600 Main International Beirgarten-Cerveceria across the street from The Fort. The facility, located at 1600 Main St., is the site of the former Asylum nightclub building, which closed in 2004 and sat vacant for years.

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