By Mark Boone / WCNC-TV | August 22, 2007

The owners of a 60 year old Charlotte restaurant say the business will close its doors Friday, ending a months-long battle to preserve the diner as a historical landmark.

The ‘Coffee Cup’ restaurant became the city’s first integrated restaurant in 1968, allowing both African-American and white customers to eat in the same dining room.

Atlanta-based Beazer Homes owns the property on which the restaurant sits. The company plans to transform the South Clarkson Street site into offices and condominiums.

Restaurant owner Gardine Wilson successfully petitioned the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission to designate the building as a historic landmark. But Wilson said the designation would only delay the diner’s demolition.

“The business has always been the essence of what the coffee cup represents,” Wilson said. “We want to continue to create a permanent situation for the business to operate in the city of Charlotte.”

Wilson has leased space in the Cameron-Brown building on South McDowell Street in Uptown, adjacent to the Blake Hotel. He hopes to open the new location on September 4th.

A second restaurant could open in the University area this fall, Wilson said.

Customers worry the new locations will be radically different from the South Clarkson Street diner which has just eight stools and eleven tables.

“It makes you feel sad,” said Owens McManus, a longtime customer whose aunt worked at the Coffee Cup for nearly 30 years. “It’s not going to be the same not seeing this building sitting here anymore.”

Wilson said the original Coffee Cup sign which hangs over the restaurant’s door and the diner’s unusual octagon windows will be preserved.

He hopes to display the artifacts in the new Afro-American Cultural Center currently under construction in Uptown.

Originally published online here: http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/stories/wcnc-082207-al-coffee_cup.5d20815b.html