Judy’s Castle restaurant, formerly located at 1306 U.S. 31-W Bypass in Bowling Green, sits vacant on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. The property has been sold again, and the new owner plans to build a gas station and convenience store in its place if construction costs come down. (Grace Ramey/photo@bgdailynews.com)

Empty for nearly three years, the Judy’s Castle building on U.S. 31-W By-Pass won’t be serving up any of the breakfast specials, desserts or “meat-and-three” meals that made it a popular dining destination for half a century.

But the space at the bypass and East 13th Avenue could eventually be a fueling stop for motorists, now that it has a new owner.

Local real estate investor Jim “Ebo” Brown, who in 2018 bought at auction the restaurant building and an adjacent structure used for storage, has sold the property to the Radha Krishna BG limited liability corporation headed by local entrepreneur Satish Patel.

Patel, owner of the Grease Monkey oil change shop at 1200 Broadway Ave. and a number of convenience stores in southcentral Kentucky, said he and his partners bought the property intending to turn it into a gas station.

Those plans are on hold for now, Patel said, because of current high construction costs, but he isn’t ruling out eventually putting in gas pumps on property that was a restaurant from 1968 through 2018.

“We own the property, and we bought it for a gas station,” Patel said. “But now construction costs are over our budget, so we’ve dropped that project for now.”

Patel said the gas station project isn’t dead, just on hold, and he said he and his partners could “build something else.”

A gas station or convenience store on the property would spell the end of the building that was home to Judy’s Castle for 50 years until Brown bought it at auction for $267,500 ($286,225 with the buyers’ fee) from Paul and Felecia Durbin in October 2018.

Brown outbid Drake Diner owner Jason Bennett, who had thoughts of keeping the property as a restaurant.

Serving food, though, was never part of Brown’s business plan.

“I’m not in the restaurant business,” Brown said after he won the property at auction. “I might lease it or sell it to someone who will keep it as a restaurant.”

That didn’t materialize, so Brown in July sold the property to the Radha Krishna group for a price listed as $375,000 in the Warren County clerk’s records.

While the property’s future is uncertain, its past has left many locals feeling nostalgic for the home cooking offered at the location that was opened by Herb and Maxine Lowe in 1968 and sold to the Durbins a quarter-century later.

“To me, Bowling Green is absolutely losing an icon,” former Bowling Green City Commissioner Brian “Slim” Nash said at the time of the auction. “But all good things must come to an end. Judy’s Castle means so much to so many people. That’s what makes it iconic.”