Thursday March 28th, 2024 4:52AM

Bigg Daddy's announces plans to open in downtown Cornelia

CORNELIA — A popular Helen eatery has announced its plans to open a second location in a now-vacant restaurant space in downtown Cornelia.

Lindsey Holt of Bigg Daddy's Restaurant and Tavern in Helen made the announcement to AccessWDUN after attending Tuesday night's Cornelia City Commission meeting.

"We will be going into the old Gusben's building, and we're hoping to be open by mid-April or first of May," Holt said.

The restaurant, on Hodges Street, will be open seven days a week offering lunch and dinner, Holt said.

Asked how many employees the new restaurant will bring to Cornelia, Holt said, "Probably easily 40 to 50."

Holt stressed the Cornelia restaurant will be a second location and is not replacing the one in Helen.

"Obviously it puts another anchor restaurant in to help with our other restaurants," said Cornelia City Manager Donald Anderson following the announcement. "It does fill a hole. Gusben's was there for a very long time, and then of course Natalie Jane's opened after Gusben's. Then once she closed, once again we were left with an empty hole."

Anderson said he is glad to hear of Bigg Daddy's plans and believes that will trigger other announcements in the future.

"It does help," Anderson said. "Forty jobs is definitely exciting. If you go and talk to the other restaurants, they will be excited, too, because Fenders will tell you they fed off Gusben's, they fed off Natalie Jane's. When there's nothing there, it actually hurts their business."

Anderson said filling the vacant space with an established business could be only the beginning.

"We're very excited about that, and we hope this will help spur other potential development along that corridor of Hodges Street, and that's why most of the ordinance changes that you've seen us make over the last two or three months have been strictly to steer businesses to downtown," Anderson said.

Anderson said the city's downtown development authority and city government are working together as they strive to make the city's downtown area come alive with activity.

"We've made requirements of businesses that people would want to open, but it can only be in the Central Business District, kind of like when we did the growlers a couple of years ago," Anderson said. "We're very committed to revitalizing downtown, and then we're very excited about Bigg Daddy's moving in and filling that hole and hopefully sparking some more development in downtown."

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