Arby’s has lost its home in State College.
The local owners of the restaurant sold their property last week to a development firm.
Troubles for the restaurant began when a suspected drunken driver crashed his Land Rover into the building in November 2010.
The morning of the crash, Linda Pagani, who owned the property along with her husband, Wayne, said the restaurant was fully insured.
State College-based Haas Building Solutions was contracted to perform structural and aesthetic repairs to the building. The company began work later a few days after the crash, and work continued through June 2. The restaurant reopened for a time during the summer before closing for good in August.
In the meantime, the lawsuits began. Haas filed a mechanics’ lien claim against the Paganis, stating it was owed $35,108. The State College Spikes sued in September, eventually winning a judgment of $3,379.14 for unpaid sponsorship bills.
According to Centre County real estate records, between Dec. 12 and 16, the Paganis sold the property for $1.04 million. Their lawsuit with Haas was settled on Dec. 20.
Neither the Paganis nor Haas returned calls for comment. A representative of the Spikes declined to comment.
The general manager for the buyer of the property, 100 S. Atherton Street Associates, is Ara Kervandjian, of State College. The new owner could be eyeing the corner for a Uni-Mart, as Kervandjian has been a vice president for the company that owns Uni-Marts since 2001, and his father-in-law, Henry Sahakian, remains chairman and CEO. Sahakian is also the owner of HFL Corp., a local developer that has built and owns several student apartment buildings and hotels in the State College area.
Calls to Kervandjian and to HFL offices were not returned.
I’ll be keeping an eye out to see what develops from here.
Absolute-ly new
Absolute Auto Repair in Port Matilda celebrated its grand reopening on Friday after rebuilding its entire garage.
Absolute has been in business for four years, formerly working out of a garage that had seen its best days long ago, company owner Anton Kukharev said.
“We basically demolished it and rebuilt from the ground up,” he said.
The new garage has two bays and a 60-foot ceiling. The larger space will give Absolutes crew of three more room to perform maintenance and repair on cars and light trucks of all brands, but especially on Hondas and Chryslers, which are the shop’s specialities.
“Our main selling point is our customer service,” Kukharev said. “We provide dealership-quality customer service at a quarter of the cost.”
To celebrate the opening, Kukharev said, for a limited time, Absolute will be offering a tire rotation along and express oil change for $19.99.
Absolute Auto Repair is at 7980 S. Eagle Valley Road in Port Matilda, and can be reached at 692-7488.
‘Like a family’
After a combined 15 years doing nails at other people’s salons, Tim Thach and Tina Nguyen decided they wanted to be their own bosses.
Thach and Nguyen are opening T Nails and Spa at 2266 E. College Ave., adjacent to the Giant supermarket. The salon will do manicures and pedicures.
“We want to do our own style,” Thach said. “We think we can do better service, and special things for our customers.”
Owning their own business will allow Thach and Nguyen to control their own schedules. That’s important for the couple, who have a baby on the way.
It also gives more perspective to Thach’s philosophy toward his new endeavor.
“We would like to run our business like a family,” he said.
Cliff White can be reached at 235-3928.
