The Waterbury Connecticut Republican American
Copyright 2005 | Thursday, Feb. 17
Willimantic businessman loaded a 30-ton piece of Waterbury atop a
flatbed trailer Wednesday and prepared to haul it early this morning
to a new home in the Thread City.
If all went as planned, South Main Street's former Valley Diner set
out at 2 a.m. today on Interstate 84 for downtown Willimantic,
arriving around 6 a.m. in the community where the decades-old diner
is believed to have originally landed around 1950.
It's also where Mike Haddad plans to re-open the remodeled eatery
this summer.
"It's going to be revived as the Windham Diner," Haddad said
Wednesday as a Pennsylvania-based rigging crew, one specialized in
moving diners, finished lowering the 850-square-foot structure onto
a heavy-duty trailer.
"We've got all of the booths out of it already. We've got them all
restored. We're going to restore it as an original '50s diner."
The move ends the 55-seat diner's roughly 18-year stay in Waterbury,
where most of the time it occupied a corner at Lounsbury and South
Main streets in the city's South End. Closed since the mid-1990s,
the diner came to Haddad's attention in December by way of the
Providence, R.I.-based American Diner Museum, an eight-year-old
organization that tries to save diners from demolition.
"Once I heard it was originally from Willimantic, and I'm from
Willimantic, I thought it'd be quite the thing to have it back,"
said Haddad, who bought the diner for $10,000 and figures he'll
spend upward of $100,000 moving and renovating the structure.
"To buy one today would probably cost between $350,000 and
$500,000."
Built by the now-defunct Mountain View Dining Car Co., a New Jersey
maker of prefabricated dining cars, diner No. 284 was shipped around
1950 to Willimantic, where Steve Chontos Sr. operated the eatery at
Union and Main streets, according to the American Diner Museum.
Chontos later sold the diner to George Haddad, a relative of Mike
Haddad.
The landmark Windham Diner remained in regular use until about 1970,
when it was moved as Willimantic undertook an urban renewal program,
said Mike Haddad.
Where it moved next is unclear, but the diner ultimately ended up on
Queen Street in Southington, where it operated for a number of years
before it was bought in 1980 by Betty and George Kroher. They
operated it as G. Otto's Diner for five years, said Betty Kroher,
former executive director of the Southington Red Cross and now an
Old Saybrook resident.
"George managed it, and our daughter Susan was the chef," Betty
Kroher said. "We loved it, but it was a tough business."
In 1986, they sold the land the diner occupied, then sold the diner
itself to Waterbury restaurateur Bob DeZinno.
At the time, DeZinno operated Waterbury's West Side Lobster House
and Heminway's Restaurant in Watertown, and intended to build a
larger restaurant that would feature the adjacent diner.
"It was always my intent to find a location for it and open it,"
said DeZinno, who now operates a Waterbury-based restaurant
marketing and consulting firm. "It was really more about saving it.
I'm glad somebody's saving it."
The diner was temporarily housed on West Main Street property owned
by Waterbury businessman Peter Vileisis, but drew the ire of area
residents and city officials because proper permits had not been
secured to put the structure there.
Ultimately, DeZinno put the diner up for sale, selling it for
$15,000 to Jim Christian, who first operated the diner at its South
Main Street location.
The diner's history since is sketchy, but Haddad surmised it has
been closed since the mid-1990s. "I know it's been vacant since
1996, because the last calendar inside the diner was 1996," he said.
The diner's current owners, a Maine-based limited liability company,
offered the diner to the American Diner Museum, provided the group
removed the diner from the property, said director Daniel Zilka. To
date, the group estimates it has saved more than two dozen diners,
including a New York State diner that was sold and moved to Texas.
"We try to find new homes for the diners so they don't get
demolished," said Gregg Anderson, the museum's public relations
director.
"People don't realize the historical value of them," Zilka said,
while the cultural value of the diner as a gathering place is
equally important. "That's really why a diner is a diner."
Haddad said he saw the South Main Street eatery in December on the
museum's Web site, where it advertises diners that are up for sale.
"I just wrote a check," he said. "It was instantaneous. I'm an
impulsive buyer."
Crews began the moving process Tuesday, separating the building from
a wooden addition, then gradually lifting the 50-foot-long diner,
sliding it horizontally along steel beams until it was above the
trailer, then lowering it onto the trailer late Wednesday. Because
of the diner's 17-foot width, the tri-axle International tractor and
trailered diner would travel with an escort during the early morning
hours, Haddad said.
Haddad, who owns a retail plaza in downtown Willimantic, which is a
section of Windham, said the diner will be renovated and re-opened
there as part of a larger restaurant that incorporates the diner.
"It should be open in June," he said. |
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