AMHERST — Amherst Chinese Restaurant, in business for more than 40 years, is temporarily closed as new owners get ready to take it over, according to a manager at the restaurant.
Manager Cathy Wei said in an interview last week that the restaurant at 62 Main St., owned by the Chang family of Whately, would close for an undetermined length of time beginning May 1 as the result of its sale to new owners.
Wei said she did not know when she and other employees would return to work at the restaurant, which opened 43 years ago in Amherst center.
The closing comes during the same week as the University of Massachusetts commencement Friday, which brings many patrons to downtown restaurants.
The restaurant first opened in 1973 after owner Tso-Cheng Chang earned a doctorate in plant science from UMass and saw a restaurant as a means of raising capital so he could buy a farm in Whately, which he did in 1976.
For most of the past 40 years, vegetables grown at the farm have been transported to the restaurant and used in the preparation of meals. A bean sprout operation in Whately also packages this food for sale throughout New England, New York and New Jersey.
The restaurant has long been a popular destination, evidenced by the 1987 expansion in which it took over space previously used by Call Opticians shop.
In recent years, though, the Chang family has been involved in a series of legal issues, with concerns about wages paid to employees and living conditions at apartments it owns.
In 2012, apartments for farm workers on Sugarloaf Street in South Deerfield and another at 299 River Road in Whately were condemned, while three additional properties, located at 90 Mount Warner Road in Hadley, and 27 Chesterfield Drive and 60 Main St., both in Amherst, had issues discovered by state and local health inspectors, including rotted floors and ceilings, missing banisters, uncovered electrical boxes and unsecured kitchen faucets.
The four-bedroom apartment at 60 Main St., which is above the restaurant, is also where a waiter at the restaurant, an undocumented Tibetan immigrant, apparently took his own life last month. The Tibetan community and the Pioneer Valley Workers Center has organized a vigil in his memory at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Sweetser Park.
According to the corporations division of the Massachusetts Secretary of State, the restaurant continues to be owned by Chang. In the most recent filing, an annual report submitted in March 2015, Wei signed the document and was listed as the restaurant’s president.
Though the restaurant has been dark this week, there are no signs on its windows or doors with information for customers. No one at Chang Farm in Whately could be reached for comment.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.