PAWTUCKET -- The China Inn, a downtown landmark since the mid-1980s, has been sold to the YMCA.
Louis C. Yip, owner of the restaurant at 285 Main St., said the Pawtucket YMCA bought the building and adjoining parking lot because it badly needs parking for its headquarters at 20 Summer St., on the same city block.
Under a three-year lease with the YMCA, Yip will continue to operate the restaurant, one of the few places downtown to eat at night.
Yip said the lease is renewable. "If we want to lease it longer, I can do it," he said.
The sale of the China Inn has stirred concern among city officials because of the possibility that the YMCA will close the restaurant, draining the last ounce of life out of the city's old central business district.
Esselton McNulty, general director of the Y, didn't immediately return a call.
But Mayor James E. Doyle was upbeat, saying a Boston developer is interested in buying the China Inn and other downtown properties.
The developer, Ranne P. Warner, is currently converting the former Lebanon Mills Co. building into condominiums that are being marketed as artists' lofts.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Warner confirmed that she tried without success to buy the China Inn from Yip before he sold it to the YMCA three months ago.
Warner declined to respond directly when asked whether she still hopes to acquire the property. "I am very, very interested in seeing that Pawtucket be revitalized," she said. "There have been many, many years of decline."
The China Inn was originally on Dexter Street. The restaurant moved to Main Street after the half-acre site was cleared of old commercial buildings by the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency in 1983.
Yip bought the land for $23,500 and built the restaurant using a $265,000 low-interest PRA loan.
"The China Inn will provide downtown Pawtucket with the type of first-class restaurant that has long been needed in the area," Mayor Henry S. Kinch said at the restaurant's March 1985 ground-breaking ceremony. "I am certain the China Inn will have an immediate spinoff effect on other downtown business."
Now Yip appears poised to get out of the restaurant business. In an interview yesterday, he said he sold the China Inn to the YMCA because he has been in the business 30 years and none of his three sons is interested in taking over.
"I'm getting older," Yip, who is 54, said. "It's not just a lot of work. It's long hours."
Yip said he puts in 13 to 14 hours a day, but acknowledged he has other business interests, having redeveloped the former Carol Cable complex into offices and a former bank building on Main Street into the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Yip said Warner offered him more for China Inn than the YMCA but he sold it to the Y because he has a longstanding association with the organization. Yip attended a college operated by the YMCA in Hong Kong and served on the local YMCA board.
City records indicate the Y paid Yip and his sister, Kwai Ying Lee, $1 million for the restaurant in June, using a $900,000 mortgage from Fleet National Bank.
City records also indicate that the Y bought the small commercial building at 267 Main St. from Kwai Ying Lee and Yip's wife, Florence Yip, paying $450,000 for the property, which contains five stores..
Although the Y is a nonprofit organization, neither the China Inn, nor the commercial building at 267 Main St., has been taken off the tax rolls.
Yip said his lease with the YMCA requires him to continue to pay property taxes. City records indicate that the taxes total $13,607 annually. The owners of the shops at 267 Main St. have similar leases with the YMCA, Yip said. The building pays property taxes of $9,115 a year.
