# Local restaurant torn down and then rebuilt back up **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 21, 2018, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877 "2018-11-21T04:17:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/21 "2018-11-21T15:22:59Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > There’s another dynamic I’ve heard about - thanks to accounting procedures, it’s simpler and cheaper often to lease the whole installation. Many of these in-a-shopping-center-parking-lot buildings are built to spec by the land owner and leased to the tenant restaurant company. The restaurant just pays a fixed rent, the owner gets to apply depreciation over the lifetime of the lease. Perhaps things have changed, but a year or so ago, there was a biopic in theaters about Ray Kroc, and it showed that one of the big innovations was for McDonalds corporate to own the land under the franchised restaurants and lease it to the franchisee. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/22 "2018-11-21T15:40:57Z")
At some point, the grease trap just becomes uncleanable. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/23 "2018-11-21T16:23:35Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > At some point, the grease trap just becomes uncleanable. That and the ball-pit. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/24 "2018-11-21T16:34:26Z")
they got rid of the ball pits a while back due to the cleaning problems. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/25 "2018-11-21T17:39:01Z")
They tore down a Waffle House in my town and built what looks like its mirror image on the other side of the parking lot. This was about ten years ago when a new Walmart shopping center was going in next door and a lot of development was going on in the area anyway. Talking to the employees, it sounds like the place was a lot nicer than it had been and at least noticeably bigger on the inside. It looked the exact same size to me, but I didn’t work there everyday. ---
**Author:** ![SirRay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@SirRay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirRay)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/26 "2018-11-21T18:16:10Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Modular. According to a guy I know who works making the stuff, it’s now modular 🙂 A year or so ago a Checker’s near me was closed and a new one opened several blocks away (alas, in a slightly less convenient location for me). The old one was demolished…or was it? (spoiler - not really). Checker’s is expanding its store count using modular construction as [detailed in this article](https://www.qsrmagazine.com/exclusives/checkers-goes-modular-expansive-growth-plans) (Note: the old one [was similar to this style](https://cbsphilly.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/checkers.jpg?w=1280), except it only had one driver-thru window.) I can’t be certain the new Checker’s was modular construction as I didn’t observe it, but seems likely (it has indoor seating now, while the old one had only the outdoor concrete benches and tables) Anyway, the central section of the old Checkers was removed in one piece (at least the outer shell) and placed on a flatbed trailer to be shipped out (While I didn’t get a cool image of this Checkers module on the trailer I have a very good reason - I’m an idiot :mad:). The drive-thru awning may have been disassembled and taken away as well, I don’t know; they did dig up the old foundation so they could build a new Starbucks on the site. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/27 "2018-11-21T20:04:55Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > IIRC McDonald’s policy is that the buildings must be “refreshed” every so often. Often the scale of changes makes it cheaper (faster, and more convenient) to tear down and rebuild. McD’s is getting away from being a sit-in restaurant and focussing more on drive-thru/take-out. They are also trying to get away from the 50’s-style garish look and go for more sedate, earth-tone, etc. > > Plus, with many building codes, as other post alluded to, once you start changing the plumbing or electrical, you are required to bring it all up to current code. By the time you tear out all the interior walls you may as well build from scratch - faster and simpler. Long term it means cheaper maintenance. That’s what just happened to the first McDonald’s that opened in my town. It dated from 1963 and still had the giant \*\*“M” \*\*arches in front of it, It had been remodeled and expanded at least once but was obsolete as far as the company was concerned is they leveled the building, filled in the basement, and constructed a much smaller structure with more drive-thru lanes. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/28 "2018-11-21T20:49:59Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I had been observing the construction going on with the restaurant, thinking it must be something substantially different (like, a majorly different design in mind) for them to tear it down. But seeing the new restaurant being essentially identical got me confused. If you’re really interested, you could look at the City of Austin building permit & tear-down permit. They usually have information in them. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/29 "2018-11-21T23:58:49Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > IIRC McDonald’s policy is that the buildings must be “refreshed” every so often. Often the scale of changes makes it cheaper (faster, and more convenient) to tear down and rebuild. McD’s is getting away from being a sit-in restaurant and focussing more on drive-thru/take-out. They are also trying to get away from the 50’s-style garish look and go for more sedate, earth-tone, etc. > > Plus, with many building codes, as other post alluded to, once you start changing the plumbing or electrical, you are required to bring it all up to current code. By the time you tear out all the interior walls you may as well build from scratch - faster and simpler. Long term it means cheaper maintenance. > > There’s another dynamic I’ve heard about - thanks to accounting procedures, it’s simpler and cheaper often to lease the whole installation. Many of these in-a-shopping-center-parking-lot buildings are built to spec by the land owner and leased to the tenant restaurant company. The restaurant just pays a fixed rent, the owner gets to apply depreciation over the lifetime of the lease. It may be simpler cost-wise to tear down and rebuild than deal with the accounting of “we wrote off the whole building but now we have renovated and it has a higher value than the cost of renovations”. That would mean re-doing the tax deductions going back years or some sort of accounting headache. Certainly tearing everything down and rebuilding it is a lot cleaner for the accountants, as you can record a disposition of the old asset and then a construction of a new one. There wouldn’t ever be an impact on previous tax returns or financial statements, though if you do decide to renovate you may have to dig back into your records to see exactly what you paid for the specific things that you are replacing so that you write off those specific costs fully, something you don’t have to worry about if you just get rid of the whole building. For those that own the land, from a financial accounting perspective, it is a very good thing to tear an entire building down rather than make repairs, because you don’t have to expense the cost of tearing down a building in order to reuse your land - you book it as an additional cost of the land. This financial reporting rule is not necessarily true in tax-land; though you probably can’t immediately expense the costs of the demolition, you can likely include them as part of the depreciable basis in the new building and thus eventually deduct them, while the costs remain sitting on your financial statements’ balance sheet as an asset. I’m not an expert in the tax treatment of building renovations and such compared to rebuilding, so I don’t know for sure. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/30 "2018-11-22T00:11:09Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > These kind of buildings are designed to be temporary and they certainly aren’t reusable. A japanese restaurant took over an old Wendy’s in my home town. Fortunately the food is very good, even though the inside was extensively remodeled there is no mistaking that you are eating japanese food in a wendy’s. This kind of reuse is very unusual in my experience. There was a Wendy’s not far from my house that closed a few years ago; it’s now a branch for a local credit union. The building was gutted and remodeled from the inside out. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/31 "2018-11-22T01:32:31Z")
Had something similar happen here a few years back. There was a two story bank building that had been in operation for about 10 years that was torn down and rebuilt with little notice. The reason, according to a usually well informed friend, was that the original foundation hadn’t been properly prepared which led to settling making the building unsafe. Not sure how they worked out liability for that, but I’m sure everyone’s lawyers were well paid at the end of it. ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/32 "2018-11-22T03:40:36Z")
They knocked down the Chick-fil-a near me a couple years ago and rebuilt it on the same spot. The primary difference I noticed was they added a second drive through window in a little separate building just off the main building, with an overhead conveyor bringing the orders out. Kinda cool, actually. They also reconfigured the parking lot so that drive through traffic didn’t back up onto the street. ---
**Author:** ![ThisSpaceForRent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thisspaceforrent/32/345_2.png) [@ThisSpaceForRent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisSpaceForRent)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/33 "2018-11-22T15:57:00Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > They tore down a Waffle House in my town and built what looks like its mirror image on the other side of the parking lot. This was about ten years ago when a new Walmart shopping center was going in next door and a lot of development was going on in the area anyway. Talking to the employees, it sounds like the place was a lot nicer than it had been and at least noticeably bigger on the inside. It looked the exact same size to me, but I didn’t work there everyday. LOL…I remember that. They left the OLD WH standing until the new one was finished. I ran the St Louis Bread Company (Panera Bread) right next door. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/34 "2018-11-22T17:33:22Z")
I think the accounting rule for major renovations would be similar to “I bought a truck for $50,000, depreciated it to $5,000, and sold it for $10,000.” that results in a gain of $5,000 that has to be accounted for. Similarly, taking a $2M building, depreciate to $100,000 asset and doing $1.4M of renovations and ending up with a building assessed at $2.5M means that extra $1M has to be accounted for. Not sure if it can be spread backwards, forwards or is a one-time profit, or what. But certainly fully disposing of the old building is cleaner. Similarly, it’s cleaner to separate the building ownership accounting and the restaurant operations accounting. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2018, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/35 "2018-11-22T18:04:54Z")
> [@pabstist](#): > > They tore tore down and built a new McDonalds in my town. Weird thing is, they made it smaller, less seats, etc. But made the parking lot bigger. I’ve seen this before. They take out the child play center and focus on drive-through space. The play area never made much economic sense but a faster drive through does. ---
**Author:** ![vperry1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ee7513/32.png) [@vperry1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vperry1)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2018, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/36 "2018-11-23T18:00:29Z")
Only in America can you say, “a local restaurant” and actually mean, “national chain.” Here in Canuck-land, a local restaurant means some privately owned joint. But I digress. I think my (local) Tim Hortons has had half a dozen different decors in the last ten years. If they had to teat that one down, only to rebuilt its clone, I would assume infrastructure problem (road rebuild, widening, exit ramps, etc.) may have been a factor. I heard they had to widen a D.C. McDonalds drive-thru to fit a Boeing 747. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Quatro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@Mr\_Quatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Quatro)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/37 "2018-11-24T19:34:38Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Mold in the walls is also a possibility. Yep! I bet that’s it ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2018, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/38 "2018-11-24T21:07:54Z")
> [@Mr\_Quatro](#): > > Yep! I bet that’s it Just the possibility of mold is reason enough for corporate fast food chains to rebuild, that and grease that just get’s everywhere over time. Step into an old style burger joint (like say a White Castle) and you feel greasy just walking in the door. The big profitable chains have existing modern upgrades off the shelf available at a very reasonable cost, easier to take down and replace after a set period of time determined by the bean counters. Whether it really needs it or not its more profitable to them to appear clean and fresh, why wait until you actually have mold or an uncontrollable cockroach problem? ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2018, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/39 "2018-11-24T22:08:05Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > At some point, the grease trap just becomes uncleanable. > [@kayaker](#): > > That and the ball-pit. Oh, Hell! Just combine the two and call it good! ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877/40 "2018-11-25T20:50:55Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > At some point, the grease trap just becomes uncleanable. My brother is a Master Plumber, and the _Red Lobster_ on Metcalf in Overland Park, Kansas was one of his clients. The plumbing was such a nightmare, the drains filled with a mixture of grease and bits of lobster/shrimp shells that they would have had to shut it down and jackhammer up the floors to completely replace them that they did just that - tore it down and built a brand new one in the same place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/local-restaurant-torn-down-and-then-rebuilt-back-up/824877.md?page=3)