Don Pablo's Mexican Kitchen opens for lunch at 11 a.m. this Monday, after a delay of several weeks that caused many local residents to wonder what's going on.

The late start, according to restaurant manager Dave Price, was mainly due to construction conflicts with other restaurants in the chain. A single company handles all of the construction, he said.

"Some things had to be slowed up, some things had to be speeded up, as it were," he said. "We were doing some refits on some other restaurants, adding patios. So they had to pull some people [from the Peachtree City location]."

Another conflict was the opening of other restaurants near the same time as this one, Price said, and the training of new employees going on at more than one location (the Peachtree City restaurant has about 100 employees).

"We had openings going on in other cities," he said. "In order not to pull our corporate trainers and stretch them too thin, leaving our existing units too short, we had to space out our openings."

Price said there have been no problems between Don Pablo's and the city, despite a number of rumors to the contrary.

"I could write a list of all the funny stories about why we're not open," he said, citing such items as the power lines coming across Ga. Highway 54 being too low, the restaurant's parking lot being sloped at too great of an angle, and the builders cutting down too many trees.