Wichita Spangles that closed this week holds special spot in the chain’s history
Yet another Wichita restaurant has abandoned North Broadway.
The Spangles restaurant, which has operated at 850 N. Broadway for 42 years, quietly closed on Tuesday, said Rene Steven, the local chain’s director of operations. All the signs have been removed from the building, which is now surrounded by fencing.
“It kept getting broken into,” Steven said. “And it’s tough on our staff. They’re just not comfortable.”
The restaurant has operated only its drive-through for the past year because of safety concerns in the area. During the most recent break-in, Steven said, someone forced their way in through the drive-through window after hours, apparently cutting themselves on broken glass and leaving drops of blood throughout the restaurant.
Another Spangles manager was retiring, Steven said, meaning that the chain could move the North Broadway manager to a different store, so the timing was right. The chain will find spots for the other North Broadway employees as well, she said.
Spangles is the latest on a growing list of restaurants that have in recent years chosen to leave the section of North Broadway that stretches from Murdock to 13th Street. Among the others that have fled: the McDonald’s at 1050 N. Broadway and the Popeyes at 1211 N. Broadway, which both closed late 2023.
And soon, La Chinita at 1051 N. Broadway, which has been in business on Broadway for nearly 50 years, will relocate to 2615 W. 13th St.
Steven said that the closing is sad for many reasons, one of which is that the restaurant on North Broadway holds a bit of historical significance for the chain. The original name for the Spangles chain, which opened in 1978, was Coney Island. But in 1984, owners Dale and Craig Steven decided they wanted to expand and needed a new name because Coney Island was too common.
They put on a contest, asking customers to suggest a new name. The winner was Vicki Barb, who suggested Spangles because “it just sounded like a happy name.” Her prize was a trip to Hawaii.
The restaurant on North Broadway was the newest of six local Coney Island restaurants when the name change happened. A photo published in the Wichita Eagle on June 19, 1984, shows then-mayor Bob Knight and Barb pulling a big tarp from the restaurant’s sign to reveal the new name.
The closure leaves only one fast-food restaurant on that stretch of Broadway: The Burger King at 1104 N. Broadway is still open and about to be remodeled.
The vacant Popeye’s building is about to be auctioned. And it appears that a new restaurant called Castro Mexican Food is taking over the former Church’s Chicken building at 1302 N. Broadway, which has been home to several short-lived restaurants over the past several years
When La Chinita owner Abraham Sebastian shared in early March his family’s plans to move the restaurant off North Broadway, he said that customers had started to feel unsafe visiting the restaurant, especially at night.
“We’ve had situations happen in front of customers, and they get scared, and they don’t come back,” he said at the time. “We’re really just thinking about how comfortable the customers are. We absolutely want them to be comfortable.”
Still, several restaurants continue to do brisk business along that stretch of North Broadway. Among them: Saigon, Little Saigon, Kimlan Sandwiches, Donut Palace and The Artichoke. All but The Artichoke are closed each day by 8 p.m.
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