The Loft, a family restaurant just off Interstate 57 in Ashkum that has become an institution throughout the last nearly 30 years, is closing on Sunday.

Longtime owner Pat Ponton, and her son, Todd, have operated the restaurant known for its comfort food, extensive menu, including a well-stocked salad bar, all-you-can eat fried chicken on Wednesday and affordable prices.

Customers stop in off I-57 and mingle with dozens of locals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's garnered a local following from University of Illinois students from up north, stopping off for a bite to eat on their way to Champaign. And it has a steady breakfast crowd from the locals and Illini fans on football Saturdays.

"People come in and out of here all the time," said Allyn Kleinert, of Ashkum, one of the locals who stops in daily for lunch and a spirited game of Mexican train dominoes with the regular crowd at a round table in the corner.

"We've needed this restaurant," said Rose Mary Spies, of Ashkum. "They've all been here through the years. It's going to be strange without them. I hate to see them go."

The Pontons own the restaurant, that once was a Farmer's Table chain eatery back in the day, but they don't own the property. It got sold, and the investor ordered them out, she said.

"Our landlord just told us and gave us two weeks to get out," said a somber Ponton. "That's kind of the problem. It really didn't give us much time to make any plans. It's not our doing to get out."

Ponton, 70, wants to continue The Loft, but prospects are thin in Ashkum, with old buildings lining the wide Main Street that has angle parking on both sides of the street. There's the Ashkum Coliseum, a couple bars and not much else.

The town's meeting place is a mile up and over the west side of I-57 at The Loft, nothing fancy but good home-cooked meals served hot on comfortable chairs and walls decorated with local memorabilia.

"We've always had a pretty good menu, and about everything is homemade," Ponton said. "Our salad bar is prepared fresh, all our soups are homemade, pies."

Charles Chandler was playing dominoes with six friends, including Kay Molvern and Kleinert, at the corner table before he had to leave for a meeting. He farms west of Clifton and stops in at The Loft every day.

"We'll find another place," he said hopefully. "I never miss a day. Some days it's lunch and dinner and every Sunday after church."

Chandler said the only option right now is a Subway sandwich shop at the gas station on the corner of U.S. Route 45 and Illinois Route 116.

"Oh, God, everybody in this community is going to be lost without this place," he said.

"I might have to learn how to cook again," Spies said.

"It didn't have to happen," said Donna Chandler, Charles's wife and Pat Ponton's sister. "Our mother [Gertrude King] worked here until she was 94 years old making pies. It is a family institution."

The restaurant's closing also will put 20 full- and part-time employees out of work, including Gladys Peters and Janice Poskin. Peters also worked at the Farmer's Table, and Poskin worked for Ponton when she ran the Silver Dollar bar in downtown Ashkum prior to opening The Loft on June 15, 1987.

Poskin, who lives two miles away, isn't sure what's on the horizon. She and her husband, Gene, a mail carrier and farmer, have four grown children.

"I'm not ready to retire," she said. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to take a little bit of time off and figure it out."

Poskin, 59, also doesn't know where she would be without The Loft.

"I've seen a lot of people have kids, and they grow up and graduate and they're having kids," she said. "It's like an extended family.

"For the older people in Ashkum, it's going to be a big loss. We have older people who come here in the morning and that's their getting out, their socializing. I think it's very important for a community to have a coffee shop or somewhere to go just to talk or whatever it is."

Ponton said she is hopeful she can find a new location.

"I've got to find something to do," she said. "I can't sit at home and bake cookies, that's not me. I definitely would like to thank all the customers that have stayed with us over all these years. We couldn't have done it without them."