The owner of the former Michel's restaurants is set to lease, renovate and reopen the Miss Portland Diner at a new location on Marginal Way.

Michel "Sal" Salvaggio of Falmouth plans to expand and adorn the landmark diner with stainless steel, glass and neon. He wants to preserve and accentuate the 56-year-old diner's period architecture and make it the centerpiece of ongoing redevelopment in the Bayside neighborhood.

Portland officials have negotiated a three-year deal with Salvaggio that the City Council will consider Monday. He plans to spend $350,000 to $400,000 on the venture and have three of his six children run the business, which he hopes to open by June.

His proposal offers a hard-won conclusion to a preservation effort that started one year ago, when the diner's former owner gave the building to the city.

"When it's all said and done," Salvaggio said, "it's really going to do justice for the restoration of the diner and the revitalization of Bayside."

The council's community development committee has approved Salvaggio's lease-to-buy proposal. He would pay $1 per year to lease the 48-seat diner and the city-owned lot where it would be located.

Under the agreement, Salvaggio would have a three-year option to buy the diner for $25,000 and the lot for $50,000.

The 6,000-square-foot lot is the site of a bus-stop shelter on the west side of Marginal Way, across from the Whole Grocer natural food store..

"It's not the most developable land in Bayside, but it's an ideal location for something like this," said Lee Urban, Portland's director of planning and development.

The bus shelter and the skateboard park next to it would be moved to locations yet to be identified. The bus shelter borders Interstate 295 and the anticipated extension of an Amtrak passenger line to Brunswick.

It's also next to three acres of city land, at Marginal Way and Preble Street Extension, that Portland officials are negotiating to sell to Theodore West. He wants to build a 412-bed dormitory for college students, a 60,000-square-foot office/retail building and a 360-space parking garage.

Urban said Salvaggio would pay $10,000 to $12,000 to move the diner from its present location on the east side of Marginal Way, across from the AAA building. The city spent $1,830 to have a Boston architect and diner expert, Richard Gutman, review diner proposals.

The diner is the 818th creation of the Worcester Lunch Car Co. Randall Chasse gave it to the city when he retired in March 2004, after several failed attempts to sell the diner himself. In June, Chasse sold the diner's land to West, who plans an office building at Marginal Way and Hanover Street.

Salvaggio submitted one of 12 letters of interest in the diner, which the city sought after no one responded to an advertised request for proposals.

Salvaggio started in the restaurant business 30 years ago. In the early 1980s, he opened his own restaurant, Michel's Rest, at the city-owned Riverside Golf Course. He had a five-year contract with the city, but sold his interest after three years, complaining later about "the politics of dealing with the city."

Salvaggio opened the Michel's on Larrabee Road in Westbrook about the same time. By 1991, he had two other restaurants, in South Paris and Falmouth.

In 1995, Salvaggio created a stir in Westbrook by proposing to open a club featuring nude entertainment at his property near the former Exit 8 of the Maine Turnpike.

The club would have competed directly with the former Mark's Showplace, a still-popular nude-dancing club a few hundred yards away in Portland.

He eventually sold his restaurant holdings to spend more time with his children.

"Now that they're all grown up and finished college, they want to know if Dad can find them something to do," Salvaggio said. "They grew up in the business, standing on milk crates, peeling carrots, busing tables and doing whatever else they could do. I'm going to set it up and oversee day-to-day operations, but they're pretty much going to run it."

Salvaggio said the diner would be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, serving traditional diner fare. He plans to build a 3,000-square-foot addition, designed by Portland architect David Lloyd, to the rear of the diner. It would house a kitchen, a 50-seat dining room and a store selling fresh-baked breads and pastries, specialty coffees, ice cream and memorabilia from the 1950s.

The diner would have a rounded, stainless-steel roof and a raised, glass-block foundation that would be lighted from the inside. Red, neon signs on the front of the diner and on the roof of the addition would beckon potential customers from Marginal Way and I-295.

"Driving by, you won't be able to miss it," Salvaggio said. "It's pretty much going to be the jewel of Bayside."

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

Originally published online here: http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/050316diner.shtml