By KEVIN CHIRI

Editor and Publisher

LAPLACE – Hold on residents of St. John, your Whopper is finally just around the corner.

For St. John residents who have lamented the loss of the one local Burger King, which sits abandoned on Airline Highway in front of Home Depot, the wait to get your Whopper back shouldn’t take much longer.

The dilapidated building, which had actually been under demolishment plans by the parish since it has been an eyesore for years, should be up and running as a newly renovated Burger King by the summer.

Merna Schultz, vice president of marketing and development for Strategic Restaurants Acquisitions, told L’Observateur this week that her company is going to remodel the Burger King and get it back up and running.

&#8220We are in the process of leasing the property from the current owners, and we expect the final paperwork to be completed very soon,” she said. &#8220We’ve already got our building permit for the remodeling, so we hope to start that by the beginning of April.”

Strategic Restaurants already operates 236 Burger King restaurants throughout the Southeast United States.

The location of the Burger King here in St. John was abandoned several years ago, and has been the source of much criticism to parish officials for a long time.

Parish President Nickie Monica said the parish had begun demolition paperwork to get rid of the building several months ago until a new owner bought the building and had originally planned to make it a Chinese restaurant. However that plan has now changed, with the owner agreeing to lease the building to the Strategic Restaurants.

Schultz said their plan is to have the building completed by the end of June and open sometime in early July.

&#8220We’re excited to finally get this moving since I know a lot of the people in St. John weren’t happy with the way that building has looked,” she said.