A wind of change is blowing down Traverse City’s “motel alley.”

The Ticker has learned that the owners of Cottage Café at 420 Munson Ave. are in the process of purchasing the Mabel’s restaurant building and property.

Mabel’s is slated to close this Friday, but there are plans to reopen the business elsewhere in Traverse City.

Following a January closing, Cottage Café owners, brothers Eric and Scott Drossart, will get to work renovating the building into The Cottage, an upscale family restaurant that will serve comfort foods.

“This will not be your parent's Cottage anymore,” says Eric Drossart. “I’m younger, and so is Traverse City, and we’ll make it pretty darn cool.”

Cottage Café founders Stan and Connie Drossart, now retired from the family business, ran the restaurant for 18 years – and the Clock restaurant for 30 years before that.

The Drossart brothers began looking for land because their restaurant’s lease on the grounds of the Days Inn is about to expire. The hotel is looking to build a dinner house on site, Drossart says, and has been helping with the transition.

Fifth-Third Bank took over ownership of the 4,300 square-foot building that housed Mabel's last year. It was listed for $525,000 following foreclosure.

New 6, Inc., doing business as Mabel’s, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July of 2008. In the spring of 2010, a TC-based company was hired to take over operations, and a partner with a TC-based Chapter 11 bankruptcy consulting company was brought in to help manage it.

Mabel’s manager Kim Sipple, daughter of founders Greg and Carol Bright, is looking for a new location for Mabel's restaurant in Traverse City and hopes to reopen within a few months. The restaurant has been operating on the corner of Munson Avenue and Eighth Street since 1990, scooping up several “People’s Choice” awards along the way.

The Drossarts plan to bedeck their new Cottage restaurant in a northern Michigan cottage theme, with a new layout and a fresh paint coat of paint outside. The Cottage Café’s famous buffet bar will be left behind and replaced with a weekend brunch serving prime rib. They also plan to pursue a liquor license for the new location; hours will be 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

A mid-February is planned; the current Cottage Café at the Days Inn location will remain open until then.