A Pizza King restaurant will open in Mount Pleasant nearly two years after the original location burned down in September 2007.

Plans to open the business at 600 S. Mission St. are under way and the owners expect the location to be open by the end of the month, though no official date has been set, said co-owner Daniel Green.

Former Pizza King manager Evan Thomas Desjardins set the former location on Preston Street on fire Sept. 16, 2007. He was found guilty of arson and was sent to prison in June 2008. Levi Henning, the former owner of the restaurant that burned down, is not involved with the new restaurant.

Green shares ownership of the restaurant with Kyle Schonbok, and the pair also own a Pizza King in Weidman.

“There are quite a few people from Mount Pleasant that come out there,” Green said.

They expect customers will return to frequenting the Mount Pleasant location.

“I’m glad — they had really good pizza, so that’d be a good plan,” said Mulliken senior Ashley Longanbach.

She also remembered the prices being very reasonable.

“If feel like they all missed it, it seemed like something the people of Mount Pleasant enjoyed, it had been here so long and just needed to come back,” Green said.

Students who had not visited the old Pizza King also expressed an interest in the restaurant.

“I probably would check it out,” said Samantha Swamp, a New Haven freshman.

The new location may also draw students in.

“I’d be cool because I live right off south Mission,” said Flat Rock junior Kyle Smith.
Schonbok and Green did not pursue building on the old site because of plans the property owners have.

The plan was to develop the lot at Mission and Preston Streets into a mixed use property, with commercial business on the ground floor and residential housing on the top floor.

“The people that owned that wanted to build with apartments above it, which doesn’t really work for a restaurant,” Green said.

E-mail the author: Maryellen Tighe