NASHUA – A flurry of expansion along Amherst Street west of the Everett Turnpike is continuing with two notable restaurant developments: Longtime favorite Chen Yang Li is coming back to Nashua nine months after its original home was torn down, and Tilted Kilt, a “Hooters”-like chain that is part of a flourishing market segment sometimes known as “breast-aurants,” is arriving as part of a push into New Hampshire.

Chen Yang Li, a Chinese restaurant that flourished for 29 years in a small plaza at 337 Amherst St., will be reopening this winter a few hundred yards away, in Somerset Plaza, 379 Amherst St. It will occupy the space that once held a Blockbuster, the defunct national video-store chain.

Chen Yang Li, a locally owned chain with restaurants in Bedford and Bow, was a founding tenant of Central Realty Plaza, a small (18,000 square feet) plaza built on two acres in front of the Cannongate condominiums in 1983. The plaza was foreclosed on in 2011, and its tenants were forced to leave after it was sold in late 2012. The departure caused some controversy because tenants were only given a month over the Christmas holidays to find new lodgings; that deadline was extended to early spring after coverage in The Telegraph publicized their plight.

Chen Yang Li owner Michael Chai said at the time that he planned to return to Nashua. The restaurant started work recently in the former Blockbuster.

Central Realty Plaza is being replaced by the region’s first branch for Service Credit Union.

Meanwhile, Tilted Kilt, an Arizona-based restaurant and pub chain, is planning to be the first tenant for the Green Fall Marketplace behind what is commonly known as the Five Guys plaza at 241 Amherst St.

Tilted Kilt is a sports bar and pub
restaurant that emphasizes its scantily clad waitresses, dressed in short kilts, midriff-baring white tops, and stockings. It has been doing well: the Associated Press reports that it and its “breast-aurant” competitor known as Twin Peaks, had sales growth of more than 30 percent in 2012.

Robert Raymond of the Northampton Boys development firm, said Tilted Kilt plans to be open by St. Patrick’s Day in mid-March. This would be its first restaurant north of Connecticut.

Its arrival marks a change for Green Fall Marketplace, which along with the adjoining, smaller Red Fall Marketplace facing Route 101A, was opened in 2008 just as the recession arrived. Green Fall Markeplace has never held a tenant and Red Fall Marketplace was largely empty for years.

In July the 9,000-square-foot Red Fall and 22,000-square-foot Green Fall were bought by Raymond and Ben Coggins, two Northampton, Mass., developers. They bought the plazas, which sit on 2½ acres, for $7.25 million.

Since then, Red Fall, anchored by Five Guys burgers, has been entirely leased for the first time in its history.

Tilted Kilt will occupy 6,200 square feet of the Green Fall Marketplace.

Raymond said the developers are close to signing with a medical service business for that plaza.

“At the rate things are going, we’ll absolutely be tenanted up by the end of the first quarter,” he said.

Nearby, a 118-room hotel run by Residence Inn in being built at 25 Trafalgar Square, behind Somerset Plaza, along with a separate restaurant.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Follow Brooks on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).