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Midtown Little Rock IHOP to Be Razed, Rebuilt

2 min read

The landmark IHOP at the northeast corner of Markham Street and University Avenue in Little Rock will be torn down and a new IHOP rebuilt at the same location, the company announced on Monday.

But before its demolition some time after June 30, the restaurant, which opened June 22, 1971, at 101 N. University and is IHOP No. 436, will celebrate the location’s 45th anniversary with a weeklong celebration starting Wednesday and extending until the restaurant’s closing at midnight June 29. The celebration will feature music and “imagery” from the 1970s.

The new building will be constructed according to the International House of Pancake’s new “rise and shine” brand model, Marty Gunaca and Susan P. North said. Gunaca and North are partners in Golden Cakes Inc. of Little Rock, the IHOP franchisee in Arkansas. Golden Cakes has 10 IHOP locations in the state.

The partners expect the new restaurant, which will seat 160, to open before the end of the year and to add 40 jobs. Information on file with the Little Rock Planning Commission indicates the new building will be 5,200 SF and the location will have 41 parking places.

Corco Construction of Little Rock is the project’s contractor.

North told the Planning Commission in April that her lease with the property owner was due in May. She said then that Golden Cakes wanted to either build a new building or move but that she hadn’t been able to find an alternate location and that IHOP customers wanted the restaurant to stay in midtown.

North told Arkansas Business she had worked at the restaurant when she first came to Little Rock and had owned it for 16 years.

Customers frequently share stories about the place that the 101 University IHOP holds in their hearts, North said. One mother of quadruplets would eat at IHOP after every doctor’s visit before her children were born, and it was where she dined before she entered the hospital to deliver her babies, North said.

Knowing that the lease was set to expire this year, she and Gunaca had looked around for other locations, places that might have offered the opportunity for a bigger building and more parking, but “everyone wanted us to stay right where we’re at.”

As the restaurant prepares to close, it’s encouraging guests to share their memories of the closing location on the restaurant’s Facebook page.

IHOP is owned by publicly traded DineEquity Inc. of Glendale, California, which also owns Applebee’s. The company plans to remodel about 25 percent of its 1,600 IHOP locations in the United States. Most of both the IHOP and Applebee’s locations are franchised.

DineEquity reported net income of $104.9 million on revenue of $681.1 million in fiscal 2015.

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