Owner says Old Milltown restaurant will stay open

Walnut prawns lovers of the Northwest can relax.

Even after renovation of Old Milltown in Edmonds begins next month, top-floor-tenant Provinces Asian Restaurant and Bar will continue to keep the lights on and plates of its most popular dish coming, said owner Rachel Yuan.

Many tenants, who held a variety of long-term and month-to-month leases with the former owner of the century-old building at Dayton Street and Fifth Avenue, were told they’d have to leave by Sept. 1. The new owner, developer Bob Gregg, is poised to begin an approximately six-month restoration of the home of the first automobile dealer in Edmonds – among other civic and commercial enterprises – to the way it looked in the early 1900s.

Yuan, though, said she has a three-year lease and intends to stay put – if not in her top-floor location with a view of Puget Sound, then possibly in the ground-floor corner formerly occupied by The Muse clothing boutique.

Gregg could not be reached for comment as to whether Provinces’ business will be interrupted during remodeling.

Yuan, 46, said she was on a plane to her native Taiwan on July 18, the morning of the meeting at which tenants found out most of them had 45 days to vacate Old Milltown. She said she returned to a puzzled staff and customers clamoring to redeem their gift certificates and bid her good-bye.

Yuan, who became full owner of the restaurant in April, said she talked with Gregg upon her return and is satisfied she will be able to keep her doors open.

“When (her customers) learned we were staying, they were so happy,” Yuan said. The news also was good for her 17 employees, of whom Yuan said, “I don’t want to let my workers go. Where will they all find jobs with such short notice?”

Yuan, who said Provinces has been operating in Old Milltown for 17 years, figures she and her staff will suffer construction-related inconveniences, but they won’t be insurmountable.

“You just have to look at the bright side,” she said.