Pad Thai Grand Café will move into the Macalester-owned restaurant space below the Grand Cambridge Apartments in mid-January. Seafood restaurant Red Fish Blue, which formerly occupied the space, closed over the summer on the brink of bankruptcy.

Pad Thai is currently located a few doors at 1661 Grand Ave. Pad Thai owner and manager Pooh Phetnongphay said the restaurant will close around Dec. 15 for at least two weeks in order to complete the move.

According to Phetnongphay, the new location has a more expensive lease than Pad Thai’s current space. As such, Phetnongphay said that menu prices will go up.

“I don’t want them to go up too much at all,” Phetnongphay said. “I will try to keep it down, 25 to 50 cents at the most.”

Along with higher prices, Phetnongphay said that Pad Thai will also offer an expanded lunch menu and more dinner specials.

Phetnongphay said that the new location will provide a few other surprises, which Phetnongphay will not reveal until his restaurant completes its move to its new location.

Macalester students seem to be glad to see Pad Thai moving to the new space. “It’s a step up in the world for Pad Thai,” Amanda Westley ’06 said. “It makes me happy.”

Phetnongphay said that he hopes the move will be good for business, as he will not have to turn customers away during crowded dinner hours. He also said that the new space will allow the restaurant to accommodate larger dining parties.

High Winds Fund Director Tom Welna said he hopes that Pad Thai will fare better than Red Fish Blue. The High Winds Fund functions as Macalester’s liaison with the Macalester-Groveland community. High Winds also serves as estate manager for Macalester’s off-campus properties, including the restaurant space.

According to Welna, although Red Fish Blue had a promising start, the restaurant, like many other independently owned restaurants, was hit hard after the Sept. 11 attacks. Welna said that due to that as well as poor management, Red Fish Blue found itself heavily indebted and on the brink of filing bankruptcy.

Three Macalester alumni, Jim Dunn ’88, Sam Ernst ’88 and John Schneider ’91 owned Red Fish Blue.

Welna said that Red Fish Blue’s downward spiral was largely due to Ernst’s and Dunn’s move to California to become playwrights. “The restaurant business is like a farm, you get up early and you stay up late,” Welna said. “[Ernst and Dunn] moved toCalifornia and left the cows behind.”

Red Fish Blue accumulated a quarter of a million dollars of debt to High Winds and other institutions. Soon, High Winds and Red Fish Blue’s other creditors halted food shipments because of extremely overdue payments on invoices.

Macalester students were surprised to come back from summer break and see Red Fish Blue closed, but few students expressed sadness to see it gone. For many, the restaurant was over-priced, with small portions and out of place as a seafood restaurant in the Midwest.

Some students, however, said they would miss the restaurant. “It was nice to have a nice restaurant, even if it was kind of funky, right next to campus,” Katie LaZelle ’04 said.

High Winds advertised the vacancy in August and received more than 20 proposals. Of those, the office determined that only six of the proposals were realistic enough for serious review.

High Winds considered several factors in its reviews, including past history, a strong financial base and a willingness to sign a five-year lease with renewal.

Welna said that High Winds also considered the way in which the business would fit into the Macalester-Groveland community. He said that the applications of several chain restaurants were not considered for review.

A family-owned Vietnamese restaurant will open a second location in Pad Thai’s former site. The new restaurant will hopefully be opening its doors in the beginning of January.