“We regularly evaluate each of our restaurants to ensure they meet our business objectives, and in this case we determined that discontinuing operations is the best course,” Lynch said in a statement. “We cannot comment on future plans for this location, and internal closing matters will be handled privately with employees.”
The restaurant has been a fixture along the South Main Street/Ohio 48 corridor for decades. It was built in 1973, according to Montgomery County online property records. The 0.42-acre tract and building are owned by a Texas-based investment company, and there have been no recent sales of the property recorded.
A Denny’s operation inside a food court on Wright State University’s campus is still operating. But the South Main location was the last remaining free-standing Denny’s in the Dayton area.
The Denny’s had shut down for a week in 2009 to undergo extensive renovation that included new lighting, ceilings, carpet and landscaping, as well as renovated bathrooms and a repaved parking lot.
“There’s nothing that was in the dining room before that is here now,” a spokesman for the restaurant said at the time.
News of the imminent closure triggered a strong reaction on social media. Many former customers focused on the 24-hour restaurant’s reputation as a “go-to” destination after a late night out.
“Used to be the place to go on the weekends after the bars closed,” Mike Bilbrey wrote in a Dayton.com Facebook page post about the restaurant’s closing.
“Many memories from younger days,” wrote Leslie Thomas, who said she ate at the restaurant Sunday after an absence of a “decade or two” because her 7-year-old daughter wanted to try the Denny’s “Rudolph pancakes.”
The Denny’s server “made my daughter’s day,” Thomas wrote.
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