The Rare Restaurant Mason Revives a Historic Building

Inside a brick building that has watched over downtown Mason for a century and a half, sawdust still hangs in the afternoon light as crews put final touches on exposed beams and freshly painted walls. Nikki and Josh Logsdon walk through the space, pointing out details most passersby will never notice, the original brickwork preserved beneath new fixtures, a staircase reimagined but never replaced. This is The Rare Restaurant Mason, a project the couple hopes will become something of a catalyst for the entire Mason Mile, a story first reported by WCPO.

The restaurant and bar is set to open inside a building that has stood in downtown Mason for 150 years, a structure the Logsdons were determined to preserve rather than demolish, even when every practical argument pointed toward starting fresh.

A Project That Grew Far Beyond Expectations

What began as a renovation quickly revealed itself to be something far more demanding. "We knew it would be a big project. It has turned out to be a monumental project," Nikki Logsdon said, a comment that captures the gap between initial ambition and the reality of restoring a century-and-a-half-old structure to modern standards while preserving its original character.

Demolition began in January, and the building has undergone extensive transformation in the months since. Despite the scale and cost of that work, the Logsdons never seriously considered tearing the structure down and starting over, even when professionals repeatedly suggested it would have been the more practical route.

Why Preservation Mattered More Than Convenience

"I have been told time and time again it would've been less expensive, less of a headache and quicker to tear the building down to start from scratch, but that wasn't what either of us wanted," Nikki Logsdon said. "That's not why we worked so hard to buy this building and to secure it because we wanted to be able to keep this piece of downtown Mason." That commitment speaks to something increasingly rare in commercial development, a willingness to absorb significant additional cost and complexity purely to preserve a piece of local architectural history.

The restaurant's name itself nods directly to that philosophy. "It looks wildly different but it still kind of feels the same," Nikki Logsdon said, describing how extensive renovation work managed to modernize the space without erasing the character that drew the couple to the building in the first place.

A Kitchen Built Around Familiar Comfort

Leading the kitchen is Max Wagner, former executive chef at Pepp and Delores, who has described The Rare's culinary direction in refreshingly unpretentious terms. "The focus of the restaurant is to be more of what I call American bistro, food that is humble, food that is familiar," Wagner said, positioning the menu deliberately away from culinary spectacle and toward genuine comfort.

Among the dishes Wagner is most excited to introduce is a reimagined take on a regional classic. "The dish I'm the most excited for, what I'm lovingly calling a rare way, so it'll be our take on Cincinnati chili but we're gonna use braised short rib and some aged cheddar," he said. "We'll have a little bit of fun with it making our own, but I kind of think it speaks to what we're trying to do here, which is embrace a little bit of our history, but also put our own modern twist on it." That dish, in many ways, mirrors the building itself, rooted firmly in local tradition while allowing room for genuine reinvention.

More Than a Restaurant, a Destination

The Logsdons envision The Rare extending well beyond a typical dinner service. An event space will occupy the upstairs floor, accessible via elevator, expanding the building's utility toward private gatherings and celebrations alongside its regular restaurant operations. A food window will also service The Common Beer Company next door, creating a practical, shared connection between the two neighboring businesses.

"We wanted to create that OTR-esque vibe here in Mason so people don't have to drive 30-40 minutes and go downtown," Nikki Logsdon said, referencing Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, a comparison that reveals precisely what kind of energy the couple hopes to cultivate along the Mason Mile, walkable, community-oriented, and worth staying close to home for.

What This Restoration Reveals About Small-Town Investment

Projects like The Rare illustrate a broader tension increasingly visible across small and mid-sized American downtowns, the temptation to demolish aging structures in favor of faster, cheaper new construction versus the harder, costlier path of genuine historic preservation. That the Logsdons chose the latter, despite repeated advice suggesting otherwise, reflects a growing recognition among independent restaurant owners that architectural character can itself become a meaningful competitive advantage, distinguishing a space in ways new construction simply cannot replicate.

This kind of deliberate, community-anchored investment stands in useful contrast to the unplanned disruptions restaurants sometimes face elsewhere, from sudden closures to structural damage, as seen recently in the Mia's Table fire closure in Houston's Upper Kirby neighborhood. Where one story centers on unexpected recovery, The Rare represents the opposite end of the spectrum, a deliberate, months-long labor of intentional restoration undertaken entirely by choice.

A November Opening Still Taking Shape

If current plans hold, The Rare's doors will open in November, with crews continuing to work around the clock in the meantime, finishing details large and small before the restaurant welcomes its first guests. Given the scope of work already completed since January, that timeline reflects considerable momentum behind a project that has, by the owners' own admission, grown far beyond its original scale.

A Building's Second Century Begins

What the Logsdons are ultimately building inside this 150-year-old structure is not simply a new place to eat, but a continuation, brick by preserved brick, of a building that has already witnessed a century and a half of downtown Mason's history. The Rare Restaurant Mason asks its future guests to taste that history too, in a bowl of chili reimagined with short rib and aged cheddar, served beneath original arched windows that, despite everything asked of this building in recent months, still somehow feel exactly like they always have.