By:JOSEPH KELLARD
There's something new at "the bell." Taco Bell, that is, on Long Beach Road in Oceanside. The fast-food restaurant was closed in early June to undergo demolition, and presently a new, larger store is under construction.
The new restaurant is scheduled to be a "two-in-one," which features two fast-food restaurants combined into one store. In Oceanside, both Taco Bell and Pizza Hut will be under the same roof, said Cerineu Cila, Taco Bell's Area Coach for six stores in Nassau County. While the previous store sat 36 people, the new store will seat 70, and it will include a larger parking lot with approximately 22 spaces.
"Because it will be two brands in one, your volume in bigger and so you have to make sure you have bigger stores," Cila said.
Pepsi Cola previously owned Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken. In November 1998, the three companies split off from Pepsi to form Tricon, Inc. Today, there are 28,000 Tricon restaurants worldwide that consists of either two or three of the brands combined into one store.
The former Taco Bell building in Oceanside was known architecturally as the Mission Style, and such buildings generally last about 25 years. The franchise has demolished most of these buildings throughout the nation. The building in Oceanside, one of the first Taco Bells erected on Long Island two decades ago, was one of the last of its kind to be demolished on Long Island.
Oceanside's new, bigger restaurant will resemble almost exactly the latest Taco Bell to be demolished and rebuilt in the region in Deer Park, Cila said.
"The tentative date for the opening of the new store is October 15," he said, "But most likely it will be sometime in November, because usually there are delays in construction."
