“Name that Year” is designed to put your knowledge of Tracy and its newsmakers of the past to the test. Each week, we will publish a news item that ran in a past edition — maybe it was a major event, or a story about a Tracy resident — it’s up to you to determine in what year that particular news item hit the pages of the paper:
• AFTER NEARLY 21 YEARS OF OWNING AND OPERATING THE TRACY SUBWAY, Tom and Sue Morin in this year decided to sell the popular restaurant to a young couple more than ready to take the reigns.
“It will be a lifestyle change for us, but it’s time,” Tom said. When they opened Subway, the couple already owned the Med Club, and also ran a video store and ice cream shop.
However, they knew they had to adapt and look long-term when it came to what they were providing to the community. “We were looking for opportunities to develop this space and add on to what the Mediterranean Club was — we needed something that would cover breakfast and lunches,” Tom said. “We evaluated several different business opportunities and decided that Subway would be hopefully a smart move.”
Changes at the Med Club included a shift to more of a sports bar atmosphere in the early 1990s after the couple noticed a shift in demographics. They added on a game room and brought in pool league teams to create a relaxed, sports-type atmosphere. But profits eventually began to lag, and the Morins made the difficult decision in 2005 to close the supper club. By that time, Tom said, the Subway restaurant was outperforming the Med Club.
“Subway was paying the bills of the Med,” Tom said. “At that point, I’m thinking, ‘This is not sustainable,’ so we made the really hard decision to close.”
They also temporarily closed Subway during that time of transition. Once they opened, “the regulars all came back,” Sue said. The Morins actually put the store up for sale about a decade earlier to “test the waters” for potential buyers.
It wasn’t until Nathan and Maggie Siebenahler learned of the store that they were able to identify someone as Subway material.
• Last week’s answer: About 200 people crowded into the Currie gymnasium in March 1974 for a hearing on the issue of the Currie school closing.
