SEQUIM — The Red Wok, an all-you-can-eat buffet Chinese restaurant, is moving into the former Sauer Kraut space at Rock Plaza.
That’s good news for a shopping center that, according to co-owner Joe McLaughlin, has some 12,000 square feet of space available for tenants.
“There are others coming soon,” McLaughlin said last week, though he declined to give specifics on the “one or potentially two new places” that may come to the plaza on the northwest corner of the Sequim-Dungeness Way-Old Olympic Highway intersection.
Meantime, Vinh Voang and his father, Hon Voang, were working inside their 4,000-square-foot restaurant-to-be last week.
“We hope to open in a month or so,” Vinh said.
The Red Wok will offer a lavish buffet as well as takeout, he added.
Vinh, 26, and Hon previously worked at the Lucky Garden in Port Townsend, but since it closed, the pair is looking toward a fresh start in Sequim.
The father-and-son-run Red Wok replaces The Sauer Kraut, a German bakery, deli and cafe that closed suddenly last October.
Brothers Daniel and Tom Heintz had fallen behind on their loan payments and their lender, First Federal, foreclosed on the business. It had been open only six months.
Rock Plaza has had a hard time during the economic meltdown, McLaughlin acknowledged.
The shopping center’s tenants include a 24-hour Anytime Fitness gym; Reef Tanning; the Cracked Bean Coffee Co.; Westside Pizza and Past Tyme, Present Tyme, a toy, gift and game shop, but among them are many empty storefronts.
Tiny Bubbles, a pet shop in Port Angeles, opened a second store in Rock Plaza last summer, but closed it the Saturday before Christmas.
“It comes down to money,” said co-owner Bill Van Cleave. “There was not enough coming in to pay the rent.”
In several plaza windows are bright yellow signs describing McLaughlin’s vision for a one-stop shopping center: “Rock Plaza is looking for . . . craft/fabric store, child care service, supplement store, sporting goods, smoothie bar, hair salon/products, sub shop, mens/womens clothes.”
And at Reef Tanning, the salon McLaughlin runs, another “for rent sign” hangs. But McLaughlin said that’s not about the business; it’s for his house, which is up for rent in SunLand.
It’s just a rental property, he said, and not the house he lives in.
“I’m not going anywhere,” McLaughlin said.
As for Rock Plaza, the shopping center has spaces from 500 square feet up to 6,000. McLaughlin, who with his father, Joe McLaughlin Sr., built the project in 2008, said they are both “out there, daily, trying to pursue new leasers.”
McLaughlin can be reached at Reef Tanning at 360-683-2200.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
