New life for the historical building that housed Cafe Sevilla in Riverside

Ten months after Cafe Sevilla shut down in Riverside, the 90-year-old building that housed it has reopened as an events venue.

The business is called Avila’s Historic 1929, in honor of the heritage of the 13,000-plus square-foot facility at 3252 Mission Inn Ave.

,” said Naomi Avila of the Tamale Factory on the Main Street Pedestrian Mall.

Naomi said she had been looking for a way to expand her banquet capacity when the Cafe Sevilla property became available. She and her husband acquired it in May and have been renovating it since then. They are using the entire space, divided into a restaurant, nightclub and upstairs patio.

One of their first decisions was to lighten the pallet of the nightclub.

“When my husband bought the property, it was completely black.’

The building originally housed a showroom for farm equipment. It was a project of architect G. Stanley Wilson, whose nearby works include the 1923 Riverside-Arlington Heights Fruit Exchange, now home to Heroes Restaurant & Brewery; the 1928 Riverside Municipal Auditorium; and the 1926 facade of the Stalder building, which is being preserved in a mixed residential and commercial project that is under construction.

Wilson is also credited with a wing of Corona High School, and a Mission Revival home featured on the HGTV/DIY series “Restored.”

Cafe Sevilla had been the site of a shooting incident that left seven people wounded in October 2018. The Avilas said they don’t have any concern about safety in the neighborhood.

The new events center is on a corner of Mission Inn Avenue at the 91 Freeway. It shares a parking lot with El Patron restaurant, housed in a 1904 train depot.

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