- April 20, 2024
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The Thai by Thai restaurant has been serving Palm Coast customers for almost nine years, but owner Sompong Banchanurat said he’s not yet sure he’ll be around in two more when the construction planned to revitalize the Palm Harbor Shopping Center plaza reaches his door.
“We don’t yet have how much the rent will be, or how many years they will lease for,” he said.
Banchanurat would like to be able to stay — and to expand the restaurant’s kitchen — but can’t plan on it until he gets more information from Michael Collard, the owner of the development company set to purchase the plaza from current owner Inland American Retail LLC in November.
He expects he’ll know more next month. Then he’ll decide if he’ll remain in the plaza, and, if not, whether to keep his restaurant in Palm Coast.
For now, he said, all he can say is that he’ll be in town at least until May 2015, when the renovation project, which will move across the plaza in stages so that portions of it always remain open, is slated to tear down the part of the plaza he’s in.
Although Banchanurat and other tenants in the shopping center have seen plans for the new plaza, the city hasn’t yet received them, according to Palm Coast spokeswoman Cindi Lane.
A few doors down from Thai by Thai, at The UPS Store, Owner Jerry Eggert has been packing and shipping Palm Coast residents’ mail and packages for 13 years, and said, “I’m staying here no matter what." Eggert says he has picked a spot next to the Publix in the renovated plaza, and expects to go straight there from his current location. “I’ll never have any interruption in my service,” he said.
Eggert said that although he’s planning ahead, the deal for the new plaza isn’t finalized yet and won’t be until it officially changes hands in the planned November closing.
“I hope it does, but there are a lot of ‘ifs’ still,” he said.
At Nora’s Golden Scissors hair salon, Owner Nora Schenone is planning for a two-part move: first from her current location across from Niki’s Pizzeria to a temporary location next to Thai by Thai, then to a permanent one next to the planned new Publix.
But Schenone, whose salon has been in the plaza about 15 years, said she doesn’t mind the disruption.
“I can visualize the results, and it’s all positive,” she said. “And it’s not going to cost me anything for them to relocate me.”
The section of the plaza that holds Nora’s Golden Scissors will be torn down and reconstructed before the section that contains Thai by Thai and UPS.
Schenone plans to make her first move around May 2014, and although she’s not sure yet how much rent will be in her new location, Collard Properties has offered to relocate her and other tenants within the plaza at no cost.
“They’re giving me a brand new shop,” she said.
Shenone said she expects the renovations to be good for business. Based on the plans she has seen, she said, the renovated plaza will have the feel of a town center.
“It’s giving us a breath of fresh air, getting this brand new plaza,” she said. “Palm Coast is moving forward.”
