The Museum Hill Cafe will close at the end of the month, says Walter Burke, who has run the luncheon restaurant amid the cluster of state museums on Santa Fe's east side since the eatery opened seven and a half years ago.

The state Department of Cultural Affairs hopes to find a new contractor to reopen the cafe by spring.

Burke, who also has a Santa Fe catering business he opened in 1981, ran the O'Keeffe Cafe at the private Georgia O'Keeffe Museum on Johnson Street for about five years and began running the Museum Hill Cafe in May of 2002.

Business has been good, said Burke, who had leased the cafe property from the Museum of New Mexico and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.

"We couldn't come to terms on it, and it was my choice not to sign the new contract," he said. "But the museum foundation and the museums have been great to work for. There's no issue between us."

Nothing special is planned for the cafe's last day, Nov. 29, a Sunday. Until then, it will remain open for lunch only Tuesdays through Sundays, but not for Thanksgiving. For the last two summers, it was open Mondays as well, from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Twelve to 15 people work at the cafe that shares Milner Plaza on the Museum of New Mexico's Camino Lejo complex with the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, the Laboratory of Anthropology and the Museum of International Folk Art. Nearby are the private Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian and the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.

The museum foundation's executive director, Tom Aageson, said the foundation runs gift shops at several of the state museums, but the cafe is the only museum property that the foundation leases to a contractor. After the foundation helped raise money to build the cafe building as part of the rehabilitation of Milner Plaza, he said, the foundation was named lessor for the cafe, although that may not continue.

Cultural Affairs Secretary Stuart Ashman said he hopes to issue a request for proposals soon for a contractor to run the cafe directly for the state. "I've talked to the foundation," he said. "They have no really vested interest in managing it for us, so we're going to go directly to a vendor."

Ashman said he has looked into other models for running the cafe and prefers the situation at the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces, where the Department of Cultural Affairs directly contracts with a vendor.

"It's a premier location," he said of the Milner Plaza site. "There's probably some enterprising young restaurateur that would like to give it a shot. ... I should say historically that museum cafes are generally not profitable. They are generally a service to the visitors."

Ashman said he might consider some type of profit-sharing arrangement with the new vendor and allowing the cafe to serve dinner after the adjacent museums are closed, like at the O'Keeffe Cafe.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.