A popular Norcross restaurant will close its doors for the last time Saturday after losing its lease to a higher bidder.

Ken Weatherford opened the Norcross Station Café in 1993 in the old train depot.  His last 15-year lease with the city expired earlier this year and he was told he would have to submit a bid for a new one.

When the restaurant owner across the street bid more than twice as much, he was told he had until the end of December to vacate.

“I’ve got great friends here, but I’ll be glad to get out of Norcross,” he tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.

Longtime customers like Annie Rogers are sorry to see the restaurant go.  She credits Weatherford for growing the downtown area and worry about what will happen when he moves.

“I know a lot of businesses are concerned too that people who come here for this aren’t going to come anymore to shop,” she says.

Weatherford plans to move his restaurant nearly three miles north to Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Berkley Lake and reopen in a few weeks as MacKenzie’s.

He says he was courted by that city as well as other downtown districts that knew that he was being forced to look elsewhere.

“We have a record for opening restaurants in places that haven’t been successful…and I think it will be very good for us,” says Weatherford.

He says for now he welcomes anyone to come to the Norcross Station Café while they still can.

“If we run out of food, I’m sorry but we’re not buying any extra because we don’t want to have to take it with us,” he says.