The site of Bend’s old Tom Tom Diner may turn into a Sonic Drive-In someday – apparently complete with roller-skating carhops, high-calorie shakes and made-to-order burgers on Texas toast.

A corporate spokeswoman said Wednesday she couldn’t confirm the company’s interest in Bend, but Richard Ervin, who owns a chain of Sonic franchises in the Dallas, Texas, area, met with city planners and engineers March 15 to sort through plans to build a new 1,728-square-foot restaurant on the acre-sized parcel, directly over the old Tom Tom Diner site at the corner of Empire Avenue and U.S. Business Highway 97, according to planning notes filed at City Hall.

Larry Dolezal, who owns the land with a couple of partners, said Ervin and his partners have made a ”solid offer” on the land, but the deal won’t close for another 45 days or so.

The franchise group, meanwhile, is still studying its options, Dolezal said, but ”it’s looking OK right now.”

The Oklahoma-based Sonic chain is a relative newcomer to Oregon, with only two stores statewide, but it’s on a rapid growth curve nationwide.

Founded in 1953 in Shawnee, Okla., the company called itself the Top Hat Drive-In until 1959, when it changed its name to Sonic for its ”Service at the Speed of Sound” curbside service.

Publicly traded since 1991 (Nasdaq: SONC), it is known for its fresh, made-to-order food and its carhops, who twirl through their rounds on roller skates at many of its restaurants.

The company and its franchisees have opened more than 900 drive-ins in the last five years, according to the company’s Web site, bringing its total to more than 3,200 restaurants in the United States and Mexico.

The bulk of its restaurants are concentrated in Texas and the Deep South, but it entered four new states in 2006 alone. It plans to open 180 to 200 new ones this year, according to the Web site. About 150 to 160 of those will be owned by franchisees.

Ervin and his partners own the Sonic franchise rights to Central Oregon, said Peter Storton, principal broker for RE/MAX Town and Country Realty in Sisters. They are looking at a number of locations throughout the region, but the Tom Tom Diner site is the only one they have made an offer on so far.

Site drawings on file in City Hall for the new Bend restaurant show 22 drive-in stalls, along with space for a drive-through window. Landscaping would cover about a quarter of the building site. Traffic would enter and leave through Nels Anderson Road, with possibly a new traffic light at Nels Anderson and Empire to control the flow, according to the planning notes.

The restaurant also would be required to build sidewalks along Highway 97, according to the notes, and a landscaped boulevard.

If it goes through, the Sonic restaurant deal would mark another step in the landowner’s plans to piece together a sort of convenience mecca at the Empire-Highway 97 intersection, which is among the city’s busiest.

Dolezal and partner Rick Lane built the new Empire Car Wash building just to the north of the Tom Tom site. It is expected to open in the next few weeks.

A bank is pursuing plans to build right at the corner of Empire and Highway 97, Dolezal said, and he and his partners hope to sell another parcel for, possibly, a small in-line retail development with more service-oriented shops, such as a dry cleaner and a hair salon, designed to handle relatively quick trips in and out.

The key, he said, is that it all has to fit together and look right.

”We’ve been marketing the property for over a year, and we’ve been picky about who we are going to sell land to,” Dolezal said. ”We want to make sure we have the right neighbors. And when we drive by, we want to smile and not grimace.”

Meanwhile, an old Bend landmark is likely fated for a date with the bulldozer.

The Tom Tom Diner, surrounded in its heyday by huge big-rig trucks parked in its oceanic parking lot, marked the northern edge of town for years. But its last owner suddenly closed up shop and left shortly after Dolezal and his partners bought the land in 2004, Dolezal said.

Dolezal said he and his partners considered leasing the old building to new owners to soldier on as a restaurant, but ”the Health Department wanted too many corrections.”

”It’s a bit on the run-down side,” Dolezal said. ”When they say ‘greasy spoon,’ that’s a good example.”