The opening of another New Thriving Restaurant outlet in the five-storey building at Camp and Lamaha streets has been stalled because of continuous construction.
“Works are going on there right now so we have not been able to start as yet,” Owner of New Thriving Che Jiang Ping told Stabroek News.
The lower flat of the building is currently being rented out for weddings, parties and other events.
When Stabroek News visited the building a structure was being built at the rear of the western side of the building. It is unclear what the extension would be used for.
Qiyuan Zhang, a manger of the restaurant, had said last October that the paperwork for the tenancy has been signed and work was soon to commence in preparing the building for occupancy and to make it suited for the purposes of a restaurant and hotel.
“We have signed off the contract [with the owners of the building]. We have to now set up the building to suit [the purposes of] restaurant and hotel…this will take a couple of months,” Qiyuan had said.
He had also informed that the businesses will be opening in the early months of 2014 while pointing out that that the restaurant would retain its present location on Main Street. New Thriving is seen as the leading Chinese restaurant in the city.
Qiyuan was unable to provide other details with regard to the cost of the rental of the building to the company and other related details.
Ping would not say what happened to the Hotel proposal her company had for the building but stressed that the new restaurant will be opened in “another two months or so,”
One of the owners of the building, Patrick Sukhlal of Impressions Agency, had told this newspaper that the building would be rented out but he was not prepared to provide details.
Stabroek News has been unable to contact Sukhlal since and efforts to reach him through his company Impressions have yielded no results.
It is this newspaper’s understanding that while there have been many expressions of interest for rental of floors from various business enterprises, the owners of the building preferred to rent the entire edifice to one tenant.
Ping and her husband Xiao Guang Zhao first started their restaurant on Regent Street in 1993 and it became one of the preferred eating houses in the city.
Soon after, the couple opened a second restaurant in Alexander Street, Kitty and in 1997 opened yet another at the then Park Hotel on Main Street.
After fire destroyed the Park Hotel in 2001, they rented a second location on Barr Street, Kitty.
They later opened at the current Main Street location in 2009.
The Camp and Lamaha streets edifice has evoked much interest because of its modern architecture.
