Muscatine restaurant closing tonight

The owners of the Button Factory Woodfire Grille will close the Muscatine restaurant at 215 W. Mississippi Drive at 9 p.m. today.

Since April 2010, the restaurant has been run by sisters Becky Bonnichsen of Letts and Jan Calvert of East Moline, Ill. They bought the business from Tom and Ann Meeker of Muscatine.

The Meekers and a board of investors established the restaurant in 2005. In December 2007, the Meekers took over daily operation of the business, which, they said, hadn’t been run properly by its former managers.

The Meekers say they will not take over operation of the restaurant again this time.

“We knew this was approaching,” Ann Meeker said. She said other potential owners for the business have already expressed some interest.

“We’re just going to have to wait and see what happens,” she said.

The closing will likely have many groups and others will future reservations also waiting to see what happens. One of those groups is the Muscatine Kiwanis Club, which has met at noon on Tuesdays at the restaurant. The club does not have somewhere else chosen as a backup location and will have to find one before next week, a club officer said tonight.

Button Factory management and staff are making arrangements to transfer the restaurant’s special-event operations so that the Kiwanis Club and other groups with reservations will have their plans honored, said James Weaver, an employee at the restaurant.