The açai bowl and smoothie restaurant Purple Bowl, whose future was brought into question over the last year by development plans for its West Franklin Street space, may have found its permanent solution.
An email sent to the Chapel Hill Town Council and mayor on Monday by Purple Bowl co-owners Paula Gilland and her son Taylor said the small business is moving out of its 306 West Franklin Street home next summer. The restaurant came to an agreement with its landlords, Longfellow Real Estate Partners, to leave the location and the Gillands have identified a “new location further down West Franklin Street.”
In an email to Chapelboro, the Gillands confirmed an impending move and said an official announcement about Purple Bowl’s future is forthcoming.
Purple Bowl opened in Suite 306B on West Franklin Street in 2017 and quickly became popular with patrons, allowing them to expand into the Suite 306A space in 2022. When the entire 306 West Franklin Street property went up for sale that year, the restaurant’s leadership tried to buy the entire building — but were ultimately outbid by Longfellow, a life sciences developer based in Boston and which has an office in Durham.
Longfellow alerted its tenants to eventual plans for redevelopment of the site, but local business owners were still surprised when the managing company revealed its vision to the Chapel Hill Town Council in November for a multi-story building for wet lab space with retail along the ground floor. While the plans continue to be updated, Longfellow has maintained its plan for significant construction at the site, which has left businesses like Purple Bowl weighing their options for the future. During a public information meeting about the project, the real estate developers confirmed they were continuing to be in contact with its tenants about moving forward with their leases at 306 West Franklin Street.
The full email from Purple Bowl’s ownership to elected officials in Chapel Hill is as follows:
To Chapel Hill Leadership,
We are writing to let you know that we’ve come to an agreement with Longfellow to move out of 306 West Franklin Street in Summer 2024. We will be moving to a new location further down West Franklin.
We are going to do everything we can to create a new community space that is even better than our existing space. We want more than anything for Franklin Street and downtown to live up to its potential. We will no longer push back against the Longfellow project and instead will focus on creating a new community space further down West Franklin Street.
We encourage town leadership to do more to support local small businesses that will help Chapel Hill retain its local flavor instead of encouraging development that causes hardship for the local small businesses we do have. We also encourage you to continue to evaluate the architectural direction of downtown Chapel Hill. We think a charming, authentic downtown is a big part of what makes Chapel Hill such a desirable place to live – we should do more to protect this.
With Love,
Taylor Gilland, Paula Gilland, and The Purple Bowl
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