The sun has gone down on the Skyline Restaurant.
The top-floor restaurant at Exchange headquarters, once home to special events and after-hours camaraderie, officially closed for good June 1, after having been shut down for more than a year during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For longtime HQ associates, it was the end of an era.
“It was a really cool concept back in the day,” said Sean Asuncion, HQ facility manager. “It was more like the officers restaurant when we had more military at HQ. On the weekends, the restaurant would have live music or a DJ. It was rented out for weddings, quinceañeras, birthday parties. It was the place to be.”
Asuncion said the restaurant had been open since the late ’70s and early ’80s. His parents, who both worked for the Exchange, were also entertainers there. “They had a Hawaiian band with hula dancers,” he said. “My mother would dance the hula. My father, and a few of his work associates, would play Hawaiian music.”
In its early years, the Skyline had a bar that HQ associates could go to after work, and smoking was still allowed. Hors d’oeuvres were served.
“You could get a snack and a drink and hang out with your co-workers,” Asuncion said.
As the years passed, the bar was shut down except for special events. The restaurant served lunch Monday through Friday but faced increasing competition from the food concessions at the HQ food court and in the Express, which were able to serve busy associates more quickly.
It went through changes to make it more successful, including a 2017 remodel that added new décor and carpeting, as well as a new kitchen. But it struggled to attract foot traffic.
“It was a great location,” said Linda Densmore, combined activities manager, who was manager of the restaurant during the remodeling. “There just wasn’t enough population in the building to make it a successful operation.”
The restaurant went from being open five days a week to being open only Tuesday through Thursday, and in 2019 it changed from table service to cafeteria-style service. The restaurant was temporarily shut down in March 2020 as many HQ associates began working remotely during the pandemic.
“It was the first place we closed down,” said Robert Woods, general manager of the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Exchange, who took over management of the restaurant in late 2019.
On June 1, “temporary” became permanent. Although the restaurant had already been closed for more than a year, people who were part of its past were wistful about its permanent closure.
“We had a lot of good times,” Densmore said. “I hosted many events, many retirements, we opened the bar every other Friday for a while. There’s a lot of history there, especially for associates that have been here for 20 or 30 years.”
Have memories of the Skyline Restaurant? Share them in the comments section. If you have photos from events there, send them to exchangepost@aafes.com and we’ll add them to a special Flickr album.
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