New restaurant coming to long-vacant space in the Cross Pointe center

A new restaurant is in the works in the Cross Pointe Centre in Centerville, and it will fill space that has not had a full-time tenant in as long as two years.

El Rancho Grande Mexican Grill & Cantina is in the early stages of construction of its eighth Dayton-area restaurant in the large retail center on Alex-Bell Road east of Far Hills Avenue (Ohio 48), El Rancho Grande President of Operations Gary Rodriguez told this news outlet.

ICYMI yesterday: Mexican restaurant shuts down in Vandalia, relocates to Huber Heights

The restaurant will be located between Play It Again Sports and Great Miami Outfitters, in space that previously housed Nonnie Waller’s Parlor. Signage for Nonnie Waller’s still hangs outside the entrance of the tenant space, although the parlor shut its doors in October 2015.

Nonnie Waller’s had opened the bricks-and-mortar location of its internet-based business in March 2014.

RELATED: New Nonnie Waller’s shop praised by Oprah opens Friday in Centerville (March 2014)

Rodriguez said the upcoming construction of residential housing adjacent to the Cross Pointe Centre was a factor in the decision to open a restaurant there.

“We started two weeks ago working in that empty space,” Rodriguez said. The region’s newest El Rancho Grande could open as early as March, he said.

RELATED: Opening date set for El Rancho Grande’s Kettering restaurant (May 2017)

News of the new Centerville location comes just four days before El Rancho Grande is scheduled to open a new restaurant at 7375 Old Troy Pike (Ohio 202) in Huber Heights on Monday, Nov. 5. That opening, however, was accompanied by the closing of the El Rancho Grande that had operated for 12 years one-and-a-half miles away on Poe Avenue in Vandalia.

Also today: SWING & A MISS: No new liquor store after all for Fairborn, state says

The new Centerville restaurant is an additional location for El Rancho Grande, Rodriguez said.

El Rancho Grande operates seven Dayton-area restaurants and another seven in greater Cincinnati. Earlier this year, the regional chain opened a new location on West Dorothy Lane in Kettering, in space that previously housed an Applebee’s restaurant.

RELATED: Applebee’s franchise owner closes one of its Kettering restaurants

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