De Mori says arrivederci to snakebit Beverly Hills site.

Chalk up another restaurant closure at Beverly Hills' Rodeo Collection.

This time De Mori Restaurant, opened in 2002 by Los Angeles restaurateur Silvio De Mori, filed for bankruptcy and won't be coming back.

De Mori's is the third restaurant to fail in the same Rodeo Drive location in less than five years. It follows Texas steakhouse Reata Grill, which spent nearly two years and $4.2 million building out the space, and the California Sun Dried Tomato Restaurant.

The first West Coast location of New York restaurant Burke & Burke opened there in 1992, but the site is still widely known as the former location of Pastel, the only restaurant to have a long run in the location.

"It's historically been the problem property of Rodeo Drive," said Chuck Dembo, a partner at Beverly Hills-based retail brokerage Dembo & Associates.

Among the challenges faced by any restaurant taking the space are lack of frontage on Rodeo Drive and the requirements of Beverly Hills' conservative sign standards, said Dar Mahboubi, Rodeo Collection's owner and developer.

Diners must walk through the mall's white marble entrance and follow the red brick maze-like walkway to the restaurant.

Christian Dillon, the bankruptcy attorney representing De Moil Restaurant's parent company, McBean Food & Beverage Co., said the restaurant was lost without street front signage.

"The problem with the location was the lack of appropriate signage," he said. "Short of knowing how to get there, you won't ever find it."

Dillon said De Moil had returned to Italy and wouldn't be available for comment.

But Mahboubi was not prepared to blame the ongoing turnover on architecture. The space, he said, has housed tenants that didn't appeal to local tastes. Pastel, a restaurant that served 800 daily meals mostly of its signature roasted chicken, was a 10-year hit at the location.

Since then, restaurants haven't been able to capture the crowds to make the space work, Mahboubi said.

"Any time you get off of the street and the sidewalk, any type of retail or restaurant operation is more of a challenge to make a success," he said.

That's not to say it's impossible, said Nahid Parsa, owner of La Patisserie Artistique--a dessert shop/cafe on the second level of the Rodeo Collection.

"You see a lot of businesses come and go, not just here but all of Rodeo," she said. "That location shouldn't be difficult for the right restaurant."

Challenging start

The 280,000-square-foot Rodeo Collection was designed by French architect Oliver Vidal, who made a name for himself building multilevel shopping centers beginning in the late-1970s.

At the Rodeo Collection, Vidal designed a center that from the outside looks like a regular storefront but opens up to an expansive courtyard that sinks 55 feet to a lush garden with a bubbling fountain.

"The Rodeo Collection design was a new concept when we built the center," Mahboubi said. "It took a few years to catch on."

The first tenant moved into the center in 1982, about the time Pastel leased the 5,000-square-foot restaurant space. Later restaurants increased the space's size to 7,500 square feet.

There have also been a few retail hiccups. Saint-Tropez Stores Inc., owned by husband and wife Herve and Solange Caen, sued the Rodeo Collection management, claiming that foot-traffic numbers were misrepresented. The Caens, who sold $150 knit tops and embroidered jeans, lost their case.

Dalila Kamal-Griffin, the Santa Monica-based attorney who represented the Caens, said the numbers were nevertheless misleading.

"People don't know the story and they are misled that some big store is going to open and draw more people," she said. "They are tricked into signing leases for small spaces with high rents."

Mahboubi dismissed those claims and said he doesn't have to trick tenants into signing leases. He said the Rodeo Collection is 90 percent leased, the best it has been since it opened in 1982. Its rents have increased by 30 percent in the last two years, he said.

"People who come into the Beverly Hills market and don't succeed need an excuse," Mahboubi said. "Everybody should accept responsibility for their success and their failure."

Monthly rents in the center fall sharply from the shops facing Rodeo Drive, which run about $30 a square foot. Rents for shops along the backside of the complex run about $6 a square-foot per month and the restaurant space gets about $4 a square foot, Mahboubi said.

There are already discussions with a "very reputable" New York-based restaurateur about opening an inaugural West Coast location at the Rodeo Collection, Mahboubi said.

"We are hoping within a month or so we will have an announcement to make in who will replace De Moil," he said.