The prospects for a relocated Anthony’s Restaurant near the City of Falls Church remain alive and well, buoyed by the determination of Tony and Faye Yiannarakis and their family to make it happen.

“Everything is looking good,” Tony Yiannarakis told the News-Press this week in a phone interview from his second Anthony’s location in Mannassas. He said the lease has not yet formally been signed, but everything is inclined to achieve that and be opened for business, once that happens, within three months. Of course, that also depends on how long it will take Fairfax County to process all his permits.

Over 40 years at its historic location in the 300 block of W. Broad St. in downtown Falls Church, the restaurant was made to close at the end of May when its lease expired, and the property sold to the Rushmark Co. and combined with other neighboring parcels for construction of a large mixed-use project anchored by a large Harris Teeter grocery.

Many hundreds of loyal patrons of the restaurant that catered to families and large pizza parties – hosting many a youth soccer team and birthday party – protested the closing of Anthony’s and have continued to work to help Tony, Faye and their two now grown children and their families find an affordable site to relocate.

Talking to the News-Press this week, Tony said it was out of loyalty not only to his long-time Falls Church patrons, but also to his own employees of many years, that he is determined to reopen at a new spot at the intersection of Route 50 and Annandale Road. Three of his employees from the W. Broad location are already working at the Manassas location.

He said the menu will be similar to, but not exactly like, the famous ones used in the old W. Broad location. “We will add a few things,” he said.

With daughter Penny and her husband Pete and their child now in Greece for the marriage of Pete’s sister, the momentum to get the relocation achieved is temporarily slowed, Tony said.

Everything of value was moved out of the old location within a week after it was closed down in late May, but “90 percent of the equipment and fixtures” in the new location with be new, Tony said.

“They tell me that everything is looking good,” he said.