The Crystal Café has been a staple in downtown Grand Junction for over a decade but Monday morning the restaurant was sold off in an auction in order to settle a debt with the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Now the future of the restaurant's former location is uncertain, and it adds another empty space to downtown grand junction, at least for the time being.

Harley Rudofsky owns the building that the Crystal Café has called home for over 15 years, “We had been to other restaurant auctions and never in our wildest dreams would we think our building would have one in it.”

Up until 2002 Rudofsky and his wife Carol also ran the café but the most recent owners found themselves in trouble with the state. The Colorado Department of Revenue says it gave the owners a deadline to pay their debt but in this case that didn't happen, “Subsequent to the seizure a business has a minimum of 10 days to pay back all the trust fund taxes, if they don't an auction takes place to satisfy unpaid taxes,” says Lynn Hood with the Dept. of Revenue.

Hood says while The Dept. of Revenue isn’t seizing more businesses in this down economy they are dealing with a lot more businesses who are having cash flow problems.

Harley Rudofsky hopes to fill the space soon and wants it to be another breakfast and lunch operation just like the Crystal Café.