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Connecticut’s Milford Diner may soon face the wrecking ball

Milford Diner, photo copyright May, 1983 by Larry Cultrera
A late 1950’s vintage Silk City Diner with a DeRaffele vestibule at the entrance and an older barrel-roofed structure on the left side.

I first wrote about the Milford Diner of Milford, CT in the print version of Diner Hotline almost 6 years ago. It was in the Spring 2003 Issue of the SCA Journal, (apparently it was running late that year). In that earlier piece I mentioned how the diner was slated to close on August 15, 2003 when the Memaj family, longtime owners of the business were set to retire. They decided that with the rising cost of leasing the property coupled with increased competition from other area restaurants, they would just close the business and sell the building.

A group of local fans of the diner circulated a petition to hopefully keep the diner in place and even the Milford Preservation Trust declared it a significant historic structure. In fact the developers of the property had no plans to kick the diner out and that it could stay indefinitely. Along came customer John Lombard who made the decision to buy the diner and move it to a nearby stripmall he owned and get the diner back  open with the Memaj family running it. At least that was the plan, but alas it did not come to fruition. The diner has stayed vacant since it closed.

A May 5th, 2009 article in the Connecticut Post (ConnPost.com) by Frank Juliano updated the story with what looks like an ominous outlook.
Here is the text from that article….

Milford Diner to make way for parking

MILFORD — A demolition permit issued for the Milford Diner downtown is getting mixed reviews. The prefabricated, stainless steel building and its wooden annex have been vacant for more than five years, and several attempts to develop it have fallen through. Now it looks as if the iconic 1948 building will be giving way to badly ne

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