Donald Lentnek and Steve Pappas of Lundy's Management Corporation leased the restaurant building for 49 years from the owner, Sheepshead Bay Restaurant Associates, in 1994 and began renovating it that June. Lundy's Management Corporation offered to renovate a nearby vacant lot into a public park in exchange for permission to operate a 100-space parking lot next to Lundy's. The firm began converting the Lundy's building into a small shopping center, with two restaurants on Emmons Avenue, including a scaled-down revival of Lundy's, and up to 50 stores inside. Tam Restaurant Group (headed by restaurateurs Frank and Jeanne Cretella, who also managed the Boathouse Cafe at Loeb Boathouse in Central Park) agreed to operate the scaled-down Lundy's in January 1995. Frank Cretella said he had leased the restaurant because, "whenever I talked about restaurants in Brooklyn, someone said, 'Lundy's.'" Niemitz Design Group was hired to renovate the restaurant.
