The former Centralia Deli building on Harrison Avenue in Centralia will soon house a new family restaurant. Owners hope to open the business by the end of the month.
Life will soon return to a building that has been shuttered for more than a year after a restaurant that called it home closed last February.
The building that was most recently home to Centralia Deli at 708 Harrison Ave. has been sold to Dae Kim, of Chehalis, for $468,000. Kim is listed as one of two people in charge of a state-registered corporation called Home Town Restaurant Corp. that was incorporated April 1, just two days after the transaction went through.
Sarah Lee, who is listed as the registered agent for the company, spoke with The Chronicle on Friday and confirmed plans to open a restaurant that will be similarly named to the corporation. Home Town Restaurant has an estimated opening date of late April, Lee said.
Lee, who also jointly owns the Kit Carson Restaurant in Chehalis, said the timing was perfect to open a new eatery in the Twin Cities.
“I have good employees here at the Kit Carson, so I don’t always have to be here anymore,” Lee said. “We passed by and noticed the building had been closed, and we thought if we bought it we could put a family restaurant in.”
Home Town Restaurant will offer a variety of food with the intention of being a sit-down family restaurant, Lee said. Work has started to clean the interior of the restaurant to meet a goal of opening possibly by the end of April.
The building with the wood facade sits along one of the Twin Cities’ highest-visibility corridors. Harrison Avenue is home to several eateries, fast food restaurants and coffee shops as it directly links Interstate 5 to downtown Centralia.
Most recently, the building was home to the Centralia Deli, which closed abruptly in February 2014 after operating for nearly four years. The restaurant was unique in that it had a section dedicated to beekeeping and honey supplies, and the decor throughout evoked a Western feeling.
Before Centralia Deli opened, the building it occupied had sat empty for three years and required restorative work. It had previously been home to a Godfather’s Pizza.
According to tax records available from the Lewis County Assessor’s Office, the building at 708 Harrison Ave. is valued at $580,000, having dropped slightly from a 2013 taxable value of $614,500. The restoration work done on the building before it opened as Centralia Deli added more than $440,000 in improvement value to the structure in 2011.
