CHINA — The building that housed a staple of central Maine’s food scene is set to find new life as a day care center.

Grace’s Busy Bees Learning Center, a day care for children between 6 weeks and 10 years old, is set to open Monday at 281 Lakeview Drive, which formerly housed the China Dine-ah until it closed in 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

After sitting vacant for nearly five years, the booths and tables that previously housed up to 100 customers at a time have made way for classrooms and playpens.

The 65-child capacity day care will open for the first time this week after a fast-tracked floor-to-ceiling renovation, according to its founder, Grace McIntyre, 24.

Much of the work was done by McIntyre and her husband, Zachary, after they received the blessing and support of China Dine-ah founder Norm Elvin.

“The building had been sitting vacant for about four or five years,” Grace McIntyre said. “Norm has never been willing to sell or rent this space since the restaurant has been closed. He’s denied every offer. I showed him my plan, told him what I wanted to do and he almost immediately jumped on board.”

Elvin, 70, founded the China Dine-ah in 2006 after operating G&E Roofing since 1975. He opened the eatery, in large part, just to see if he could be successful in an industry about which he knew nothing. After about a decade at the helm of the iconic restaurant, he sold the business in 2014 to the owner of Lisa’s Restaurant & Lounge in Augusta.

Elvin repurchased the land after the Dine-ah closed in 2020. Elvin says he had been reluctant to sell or rent out the shuttered restaurant for years, in large part due to the sentimental value the building holds. Anything that would fill the space, he said, needed to provide for the community and be able to sustain itself.

Grace McIntyre is set to open Grace’s Busy Bees Learning Center on Monday at the former China Dine-ah at 281 Lakeview Drive in China. Above, McIntyre, 24, works Thursday in the day care’s classroom for infants. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

“I had to prove if I could do it or not, and I definitely could,” Elvin says. “But when the diner closed, I wanted to make sure that building would still be an asset to the town of China.”

In previous discussions with China town officials, Elvin said, he kept hearing about a need for another day care in the area. Many local child care providers are fully booked and have a long waiting list, so when McIntyre approached him with the idea to open Grace’s Busy Bees Learning Center, they quickly got to work.

Conversations about the day care first began in about April, McIntyre said, with the aim of opening for business by the start of the school year in September.

Renovations began in May and wrapped up nearly two weeks early, in large part because McIntyre and Elvin did much of the work themselves. For the rest of the project, they hired local contractors or companies.

The McIntyres built playgrounds, demolished booths, ripped up carpet and replaced the floors in a process that cost about $200,000 and took three months.

“I would say 80% of the work in here was done by me and my husband,” McIntyre said. “We did all of the demolition completely ourselves — I actually learned how to use a Sawzall. We had some friends that came to help us occasionally, but we had to tear out pretty much the whole building.”

When it opens Monday, Busy Bees will have seven full-time teachers and eight substitutes, McIntyre said. Though the day care has a capacity for 65 children, McIntyre said she is working to increase that to 100 next year.

While nearly every aspect of the old China Dine-ah has been changed, some pieces of the building’s history remain. In the barroom that once housed live music and late-night parties, the ceiling tiles decorated by customers over the years will remain in the roof above a refurbished playroom.

Grace McIntyre looks Thursday at tiles with personal messages that were placed on the ceiling of the China Dine-ah room that housed a bar and space for bands. McIntyre, 24, says she is preserving the tiles at her new day care center at the building, and plans to have each graduating preschool class decorate a tile of its own. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

McIntyre said she plans to have each graduating preschool class decorate a tile of its own.

“It’ll just be another piece of China history when those kids come back in 18 or 20 years,” she said.

Though the barstools, kitchen equipment and bandstand have been removed, Elvin said he is comfortable with the building’s new owners, in large part due to that continuity.

“I came to the realization that the Dine-ah had died, and that it was taking on a new life,” Elvin said. “Once I came to grips with that, I was all fine.”