LOGAN SQUARE — The former home 90 Miles Cuban Cafe is on the market, and hopes are high for another restaurant to move in.
The former Cuban cafe, 2540 W. Armitage Ave., is selling for $1.8 million, according to its Redfin listing. The property includes the patio, a garage and an adjacent apartment building.
The longstanding restaurant closed in December after an electrical fire and a series of financial and legal challenges. While there was talk about the restaurant reopening under new management, that never happened.
Dale Strauss, property owner with Northbrook Partners and realtor with Strauss Realty Ltd, said he hopes to sell or lease the lot to another restaurant operator. Several restaurant companies have already shown interest, Strauss said.
“We’re talking to a few restaurant operators right now; hopefully a fun operator can add something to the neighborhood because it’s a nice area for a restaurant,” Strauss said.
Strauss said he would like to see another restaurant move in instead of an apartment building, though the triangular lot is being marketed as a commercial or mixed-use development opportunity that’s near the Western Blue Line, the expressway and other businesses.
The building lot went up for sale in April for $1.5 million and the price jumped to $1.8 this week. The price changed because the initial amount was marketed incorrectly and the updated amount better reflects redevelopment prices that include residential homes as part of the property, Strauss said.
The former patio of 90 Miles Cuban Cafe at 2540 W. Armitage Ave. is for sale, as seen empty on June 12, 2025. Credit: Quinn Myers/Block Club Chicago
He said he’s ready to move on and bring a new operator to the spot after Northbrook Partners sued 90 Miles business owner Alberto Gonzalez and his partners last year for not paying rent among other charges.
The eviction lawsuit sought to take possession of the Armitage property as well as almost $62,000 in rental charges and other fees, according to the lawsuit filed in November in Cook County Circuit Court.
Gonzalez voluntarily relinquished the property earlier this year before eviction orders were served, Strauss said.
Gonzalez, who is still listed as the owner of the business per the city business portal, told Block Club in January that he had not been involved with running 90 Miles since he signed a management agreement with Kosti Demos in October.
In January, Demos said he was brought on by Gonzalez to help revive 90 Miles after it had been struggling but that “we probably weren’t the right fit to get this thing turned around” and hoped someone else could come in and revive the brand.
Demos, who runs Forte Hospitality and opened Lincoln Park restaurants Sapori Trattoria and Butcher & the Bear, has shifted his focus to open Ithaki this summer, reviving his family’s presence in Greektown. Demos and Gonzalez did not reply to a request for comment.
90 Miles was a popular destination for Cuban fare since it opened in the late 2000s. It was founded by the Gonzalez family after they emigrated from Cuba in 1980. They endured a stormy 15-hour journey on a shrimp boat before reaching Key West, “90 miles from their beloved Cuba,” the owners wrote on their website, which is now offline. They wrote that the Cuban restaurants were the result of their “American dream.”
The family opened the Roscoe Village restaurant first, in September 2008. The Logan Square restaurant opened in June 2009.
The Roscoe Village location at 3101 N. Clybourn Ave. also closed in January after the business lost its lease. According to a notice posted on the door at the Clybourn location after the closure, Gonzalez owed $28,000 in “accrued and past due” rent to landlord Marten Properties.
Dining and Cooking