Junior's moving cheesecake baking operation to New Jersey

Brooklyn (WABC) -- Junior's, the New York City institution famous for "The World's Most Fabulous Cheesecakes," is moving its baking operation to New Jersey.

Third-generation owner Alan Rosen says the company as been trying for several years to find a bigger commercial space in the city, but the Garden State offered more space and opportunity for the family-owned company to grow.

The New Jersey baking facility will feature state-of-the-art baking and refrigeration equipment inside a 100,000-square foot facility, compared to the limited 20,000-square foot Queens space the company has been operating out of for the past 16 years.

A total of 60 workers will be affected by the upcoming transition, set to kick off in July, but owners say fair amount will be able to keep their jobs and that the goal is to open up more locations.

The restaurant assured customers of its four restaurants and wholesale and mail order businesses that the cakes will be as tasty as ever, if not better.

Junior's flagship restaurant is located on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Just last year, the owner turned down offers to buy the site and build an apartment tower.

Rosen put the two-story building up for sale in February of 2014, but later took it off the market.

"This is Junior's identity, is this building," Rosen told the New York Times at the time. "This is the one where I came on my first dates. It's where my family spent most of their waking hours. Not the one down the street, not the one below 20 stories of condos. This one."

While the building was still on the market, Rosen said he struggled between offers that would bring back Junior's in the ground floor of the building and bigger offers, like one for $45 million in cash that required Junior's to leave permanently.

After months of second thoughts, disappointed calls from customers and tempting offers, Rosen decided he could not give the building up.

"I'm not just running a restaurant," he told the Times. "I'm running something that has such a heritage and such a tradition for so many people here in Brooklyn, that it just can't be replaced."

The famous cheesecake family-owned business now stays standing at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb avenues after three generations since its opening in 1950.