Out with old, in with new
BUTLER TWP — When the giant claw breached the surface and mercilessly ripped out the first portion of the building's guts, a crowd of onlookers that included several children screamed with delight.
About 30 employees, former employees and regular customers of the Eat'n Park on New Castle Road parked at the Point Plaza Shopping Center early Tuesday to watch. Within an hour, a huge excavator had reduced the building to a pile of rubble.
The restaurant was a staple on the “restaurant row” section of New Castle Road for 50 years before the company decided to build a new, updated Eat'n Park on the lot of the former KFC one property to the east.
The site of the old restaurant will be used for parking for the gleaming new building, which will open May 5, said Becky McArdle, Eat'n Park spokeswoman.
Employees excited to work in the upgraded building lined up for a picture in front of the old restaurant before workers fired up the excavator.The group sang “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” by the band Steam and formed a kickline as pictures and video were taken for posterity.Many grinning employees and customers held their smartphones aloft to record the excavator bucket's teeth tear into the building and pull it down once the area was cleared for safety.The group then scurried back across New Castle Road to film from the Wendy's parking lot next door, which afforded a better vantage point.All who requested a brick memento from the old building received one to take home.The building was an auto service center and Gatsby's Lounge before becoming Eat'n Park in 1970, said Dave Davenport of Butler Township, who met there with his contemporaries each morning to enjoy breakfast.“I've been coming here for 50 years,” Davenport said. “It's the camaraderie. The employees are like family, and they treat us like family.”He looks forward to noshing with his buddies at the new restaurant when it opens next month.
McArdle said the restaurant originated the annual companywide Caring for Kids campaign, when former cook, Kay Neely, asked her coworkers to donate to the now UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.A group of employees from the restaurant went caroling in Butler to raise funds, and when Neely presented the $400 donation on a Pittsburgh radio station, she challenged all Eat'n Park employees to raise money for the hospital as well.“That's how our Caring for Kids campaign started,” McArdle said.A wall in the new restaurant will be dedicated to Neely and the campaign she initiated, McArdle said.Amy Young, who has worked at the location for half of its life as an Eat'n Park, said she has stuck with the company because it allowed her to be a wife and mother first and an employee second when her children were little.She said her parents had their first date in the restaurant in 1975.Young, who took a white brick home to remember her employment at the building, watched as the side, back and then front of the building crashed to the ground.“It's sad, because it was like home for 25 years, but I'm very optimistic for the future,” Young said. “They made the new building very efficient, so it will be a lot easier on us.”
McArdle said the new digs will feature increased seating, a new parking lot, a QR code reader at each table where customers can view the menu or pay their bill, online ordering, lobby pickup shelves and a new and improved pickup window.“It's completely updated, top to bottom,” she said.Asked why the company invested so much to build a new restaurant beside the old one, McArdle said Butler has been an excellent community for Eat'n Park over five decades.“We are continuing to upgrade our restaurants, and this is a great opportunity to do that,” she said.While the old Eat'n Park employs about 60 people, the new restaurant will hire 40 more at open interviews starting at 8 a.m. Saturday.McArdle said Tuesday was Eat'n Park's fifth “wreck-and-rebuild” project, with the others occurring in the Pittsburgh suburbs of Banksville, Bethel Park, Avalon and Peters Township.Meshell Branan, general manager of the restaurant, said while the building definitely needed upgrading, the demolition was bittersweet.“It's something we've been waiting for for a very long time,” Branan said. “We're looking forward to having the updates and being able to give the community a new place to meet.”She said the old building's dining room layout included many twists and turns, because multiple additions were built on the rear of the structure over the years.
Branan said she thinks the demolished building was one of the oldest of those lining the shopping and restaurant district on New Castle Road.The demolition was supposed to take place in March 2020, but was held up by the coronavirus pandemic.Construction on the new building began in November, Branan said.Miranda Mohn has worked as a server at the New Castle Road Eat'n Park for six years.“I'm excited,” she said. “It's sad because there are a lot of memories in that building, but we definitely need a new one.”Like everyone gathered at 7 a.m. Tuesday at the shopping center, Mohn anticipated the demolition of her workplace.“This is going to be memorable,” Mohn said. “You don't often get to watch the place where you've worked fall down.”<i>Correction: This story has been updated with the corrent spelling of Kay Neely.</i><iframe width="100%" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0nMsEmHFsHU" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
