Norman Brinker. PAnews.com, Port Arthur, Texas Hear.

DALLAS (AP) - Norman Brinker, who built a worldwide offhand dining empire that includes Chili’s Grill & Bar, On the Border and Maggiano’s Little Italy, died Tuesday at adulthood 78. Brinker died at a health centre in Colorado Springs, Colo., said Robin Rymer at the Swan-Law Funeral Home. She did not recall the cause of death.

Brinker retired as chairman of Dallas-based Brinker International in 2000 after construction the secure of more than 1,000 casual-dining restaurants. The entourage now has 1,700 restaurants in 27 countries, according to its Web site. Brinker got his quail with a coffee rat on in Dallas in the 1960s and later developed the concept for Steak & Ale restaurants, where he’s credited with popularizing the salad wine bar and uninterested dining. He sold Steak & Ale to Pillsbury Co in the original 1970s and went to produce for Pillsbury’s restaurant division. During his regulate at Pillsbury’s restaurant division, he created the Bennigan’s tie and became known for creating a "fern bar" restaurant trammel concept intended to pull singular people.

Brinker later purchased Chili’s, which had started as a lone restaurant in Dallas, and took the bond social in 1983 under the trade-mark Brinker International. Chili’s now has about 900 company-owned restaurants and more than 550 franchises. Among the chains Brinker International has bought and sold are Corner Bakery Cafe, EatZi’s Market and Bakery.

It now operates Romano’s Macaroni Grill in counting up to the other dignitary names. Brinker started out as a busboy in Southern California, moved to Dallas in the 1960s with his victory wife, tennis great Maureen Connolly Brinker, who died in 1969. In 1993, Brinker was critically injured when a horse level on him during a polo match.

He was in a coma for three weeks and was paralyzed on his communist unimportant for nearly three months but recovered and in due course walked again. Brinker was divorced from Nancy Brinker, a ci-devant U.S. delegate and Republican fundraiser, who persist month was named the World Health Organization’s "goodwill ambassador" to lift cancer awareness. She is the abort of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a heart cancer munificence named for her only sister who died of the ailment at 36.

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Houston Dome. Planetarium image floated for Houston's Astrodome Know.

Add a planetarium to the myriad ideas for what to do with the Reliant Astrodome, Houston’s iconic hippodrome whose tomorrow has hung in uncertainty as officials and entrepreneurs have proposed supplementary uses ranging from a casino to a flick studio. The news idea, a on of which was proposed by Commissioner El Franco Lee, is to modify unit of the 44-year-old Astrodome into a planetarium or a medical or method institute, leaving additional arrange for some other segment use. Commissioners Court will desire Tuesday on whether to shell out $50,000 for a applicability contemplate of the idea.

"The Astrodome is a world-recognizable wait and we want to put it to the highest and best use," Lee said Friday. "We have been on the acrimonious acrimony of several technologies from aerospace to drug and we would be looking at an educational venue that highlights that." The tomorrow's of the Astrodome, once to the heart to Houston’s baseball and football teams, has been ambivalent since 2002, when Reliant Stadium opened next door. Mostly potential Since then, it has played manageress to primary events, activities with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and even Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

For the keep on duo years, however, the circus has sat mostly dormant. Proposals have poured forth for what to do with the stadium. Some suggest it should be razed.

Others have floated ideas for a talking picture creation studio and a topic park. In latest years, county officials have considered a draft to decline the complete facility into an upscale meeting hotel. Lee said he expects the known proposal to be less contentious than earlier ideas, particularly the assembly hotel. "One of the major prerequisites is to have onboard and in lockstep the holder of the Texans and the owners of the Livestock Show and Rodeo," he said. "And they have shown interest.

" Judge Ed Emmett, who had been skeptical of plans to return for the seminar hotel, said he supports the planetarium guess because it focuses on well-known use. It also would do a moonlight flit expanse in the dexterity for other features, such as a meeting space for festivals or concerts. "My absolute interest is to turn the Astrodome into something that can be second-hand by the public," Emmett said.

"The point of funding is always flourishing to be an issue, but basically cleaning up the dome and using it as an present space that you put other things into is very unique than turning the whole attitude into a hotel." Voters may weigh in County officials this summer will begin gravely to turn over the various ideas and eventually could take the ask of what to do with the Astrodome to voters.

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