Cart Barn Grill owner Tony Bishop said the restaurant will close at its current location by the end of 2017, after he officially received notice from Selig Enterprises to vacate the property.

The notice came as no surprise, as Selig and Bishop have been going back and forth for more than a year about the future of the property.

The official notice was sent Sept. 11 and lists January 31, 2018, as the date Selig’s contract officially ends with Bishop.  He said he wasn’t surprised to get the notice, considering the amount of time he’s had to prepare.

“I already knew it was coming,” he said. “There were no surprises there. It wasn’t like we haven’t been told on a regular basis that time is almost up.”

He said many customers have told him that they’ll help him move and have volunteered to help in any way they can. More than anything, they want to know what the future for the restaurant holds.

“We will close the last week of December,” Bishop said. “What I’m planning on doing is retiring myself. My son [Shawn], we are going to try to relocate it for him.”

Bishop said if the closure was taking place in the spring, he’d have a crawfish boil.

However, since it’ll likely be cold outside, he’s not sure if the Cart Barn will do anything special to celebrate 14 years at its current location.

Nothing is set in stone, but he currently plans to close the week of Christmas. However, he’s considering re-opening for New Year’s Eve for one last hurrah.

He said he’ll need time to get all of his equipment out of the building, so he’s giving himself a month to do so.

“I’m going to remove everything in this building that belongs to me and you can’t do that in one day,” Bishop said. “The exhaust system, everything I’ve put in here, the air conditioning, the fixtures, the electric panels because they are just going to tear it down. It can be used somewhere else.”

Ron Orr, the LaGrange development partner for Selig Enterprises, confirmed that Selig had sent the notice Friday morning. During an interview for LaGrange Living magazine, Bishop said Selig had offered to put him up a new building, but he refused because he was about to retire.

“We’ve done everything we can to help Tony, and we wish him well,” Orr said. “We talked to him about the possibility of rebuilding the Cart Barn on that project but that was not something that was economically viable for him.”

Bishop said they are working on re-locating the business to a new spot in Troup County, but the preferred location has run into a few hiccups.

He said either way, it’s going to take time before the Cart Barn is back up and running again.

“It doesn’t look like we are going to move anywhere right at the time as we close,” Bishop said. “There could be as much as a six-month closing.”

Until then, he’s thankful for the time he’s spent at the current building, and he’s looking forward to the next three months cooking for the people of Troup County.

“I want to thank [my brother] Terry Bishop and the people of Troup County for their support over the years,” he said.