One month after a devastating fire destroyed the beloved Pappas Drive In & Family Restaurant in New Smyrna Beach, the iconic building is ready for demolition.
But according to owner Vic Ganoe, plans are in the works to hopefully return the restaurant to the same location, where it was a community favorite for almost 55 years.
Ganoe said work has already started with “some of the hazardous parts of the building” being removed.
“We’ve taken some bids on demolition. “I think we need one more before we make a decision,” Ganoe said in an interview Friday.
Will Pappas Drive In restaurant be rebuilt?
Ganoe said he and Chris Pappas, the original business owner who still owns the property, are collaborating to find a way to reopen the restaurant.
“Our goal is to rebuild,” Ganoe said. “Timeframe is unknown… We’re trying to make it happen.”
He said one way would be through “outside investment,” as insurance money alone won’t be enough for a rebuild process.
“If someone wants to get in touch with me regarding interest in partnering up as a silent partner or investor type deal, we’re definitely looking into that,” Ganoe said.
Ganoe said most restaurant staff members have been able to find jobs, which was one of their main concerns after the fire.
He also said the GoFundMe account set up by one of Pappas’s longtime customers, with the help of one of the restaurant’s managers, raised more than $8,000, which was distributed among the 35 staff members.
“That was great that someone took that initiative and did that,” he said. “Everybody is back to work who wants to be.”
If Ganoe can rebuild, the goal is to make it as similar to the original site as possible, he added.
“We want to do the way it was, with the canopy, the lights, the glass that surrounds the entire place and all of that,” he said. “It’s a landmark. It’s part of the heritage of New Smyrna, it was there when there was dirt road in front of it, and the goal is to have it back. That building is iconic.”
He said the likely challenge ahead is going through the permitting process with the city, as building codes and bureaucracy have changed since the 1970s.
“We still have a steady goal of rebuilding,” he said. “We’re in the beginning stages, we haven’t even scraped the surface, literally.”
What happened to Pappas Drive In restaurant?
On Sunday, March 17, a fire started just before midnight at Pappas Drive In & Family Restaurant, located at 1103 N. Dixie Freeway.
The restaurant had closed at its regular time of 9 pm Sunday and “everybody was out by 9:45 pm,” Ganoe told The News-Journal the Monday after the fire.
Ganoe said he received a call around midnight from the alarm company saying there was smoke in the kitchen.
“I checked the cameras, cameras were down,” Ganoe said. “I came up here, and it was on fire.”
New Smyrna Beach Fire Chief Shawn VanDemark said last month the call came in around midnight and when crews arrived on scene, “flames were already coming out of the building.”
“We found the majority of the fire toward the rear attic space,” he said.
Brad Pitt at Pappas: Brad Pitt in Daytona to film Formula 1 movie? Here’s what to know
The investigation into the cause of the fire is still ongoing, according to Ganoe.
“That building burned for over nine hours,” he said. “So because it was such an old building and what they call ‘fuel’ — all the wood beams and everything in the attic… Maybe it will be an undetermined deal.”
