Chao Phya Thai in Windward City Shopping Center will stay open at least through the end of September.

While you wait for loud cheers from any longtime fans in your vicinity to quiet down, waiting for this news has been a huge burden for restaurateur Angoon "Mama Toy" Coppedge.

She had been facing a Sunday deadline to pay off a significant amount of back rent, or face eviction from the restaurant her late daughter persuaded her to buy in 1996.

She learned Friday that "we are staying in business," said Mina Brinkopf, a longtime customer who, with restaurant business consultant Guy C. Smith, has been helping Coppedge with operational matters.

"Guy and I want to work out this current situation, and I do believe we can make a positive impact moving forward … working with Mama. We would very much like to continue her legacy," said Brinkopf.

Brinkopf expressed gratitude to shopping center management for "working with us."

"I feel at this point, they do want to make it work," she said.

Coppedge’s daughter, Atchara "Timmie" Somanee, ran the business side of the restaurant while her mother did the cooking.

The business side of the restaurant languished following Somanee’s lupus diagnosis and ultimate death in 2012, and Coppedge fell into arrears until Brinkopf and Smith stepped forward to help her arrange the company’s finances. In recent months she was able to make monthly lease payments, while working on whittling down the back rent.

A story about Coppedge’s struggle in this space on Aug. 13 compelled a Windward family, with some members living on the mainland, to establish a crowdfunding campaign to help their beloved Mama Toy.

"Even though my family moved to Atlanta seven years ago, we get back to Hawaii at least two to three times a year and one place we always make sure to go is Mama Toy’s for Thai," wrote Mike Stott, via email. "Over the past 18 years she’s been almost an aunty to the Stott ohana. She’s always been gracious and sharing."

J’S BAR-B-Q CLOSING

Closure is not always a good thing.

Sure, it can mean the resolution of an unresolved aspect of one’s life, but reading about closure in this column usually brings a wistful sadness.

J’s Bar-B-Q at 410 Keawe St. will serve its last breakfasts, plate lunches and take-home family packs on Sept. 12, or possibly Sept. 13, if there’s still food left to prepare and sell, So Ung Pak, longtime owner and operator, told your columnist.

It is no secret that landowner Kamehameha Schools plans to redevelop much of the block that J’s occupies, but its last day of operation has been uncertain until recent days. Pak has to be completely out of the space Sept. 19, he said. He will relocate much of his kitchen equipment and fixtures to Waianae, where he and partner Barry Nam recently purchased Ono Polynesian Market at 85-998 Farrington Highway.

Pak and Nam retained the store’s seven employees, and plan some remodeling so they can serve J’s-type food including familiar Korean dishes and local-style plate lunches at the location, which is right across Lualualei Homestead Road from the post office.

Food service there should begin before Christmas, Pak said.

Every weekday morning, HECO trucks are parked around J’s, with crew members in blue coveralls eating breakfast inside.

Where they will go starting in mid-September is a mystery; meanwhile, they and other Kakaako regulars, including Honolulu Star-Advertiser employees, will have to wait for about a year, when J’s will reopen within a block’s radius of its current spot. The location has yet to be completely nailed down.

Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.