Winsupply’s Vice President of Real Estate Services and In-House Counsel Bill Tolliver confirmed that sale of the property took place Friday. He declined to disclose the amount of the sale.
Winsupply, as property owner, will partner with an entrepreneur to run the restaurant, he said. The company has “an experienced restaurateur” identified, but that deal is not yet finalized.
“We’re not ready to go public with who it is, but we feel very good with the person that we’ve been engaged with,” he said.
The Golden Nugget was founded in 1962 by Steve and Bessie Thomas. It had been a family-owned business for several decades.
Montgomery County online property records indicate the transaction has yet to be recorded as of Friday afternoon. The county website still had Thomas Golden Girls LLC as the owners.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Tolliver said the restaurant would open back up as a breakfast and lunch restaurant early next year.
“We’re very excited about it and we’re very thankful for the Thomas family for trusting us with something that is near and dear to their heart as well as our own,” he said.
Tolliver said although Winsupply buys a lot of real estate, “this one is unique and it’s special for us.”
“It’s in our neighborhood and … when our company first started, it was in the basement of one of our founder’s father’s houses in Oakwood,” he said. “When they finally moved out of the basement, they moved to the Hills & Dales shopping center, but they didn’t have a conference room, so board meetings and corporate direction in all of those early times, those meetings were held at the Golden Nugget Pancake House. It played a significant part in the lifespan of Winsupply.”
Tolliver said the contribution the Thomas family made to the Dayton food scene “really is hard to beat.”
“I think that all of us that have grown up in Dayton have a special place in our heart for the Golden Nugget and how excited we’d get when one of the Thomases would see us at the front of the line and say ‘How many?’ and grab the menus and walk us to our table after waiting for 40 minutes,” he said. “It was great.”
Kettering City Manager Matt Greeson said in a statement that the sale “means a great deal both sentimentally and economically. Winsupply chose to breathe new life into this beloved landmark that the Thomas family made legendary.”
The Golden Nugget, Kettering Mayor Peggy Lehner said, “will always be known as an iconic restaurant in Kettering that holds so many memories for residents. The Thomas and Frangomichalos families and their staff were considered extended family by most patrons.”
The vacated site had been the focus of plans by a convenience store chain that has yet to open any Dayton-area sites.
GetGo had previously filed documents involving the property, Kettering records show. The chain owned by Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle submitted a zoning permit application at the site of the Golden Nugget, according to the city.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
