Kool Korner Sandwiches, the Cuban sandwich shop that opened six years ago in the Vestavia Hills City Center, has closed, but its owners hope to reopen soon in another location in the Vestavia Hills area.

Bill Ramirez, who co-owns Kool Korner with his father, 92-year-old Cuban immigrant Ildefonso Ramirez, told AL.com their lease expires at the end of this month, and they could not agree on a new lease with the managers of the property.

"This restaurant has meant a great deal to my dad," the younger Ramirez said. "It's his life. He loves to cook for people, and people come back to him and say they like his food.

"I'm sure it's the reason he feels so active and alive at 92, and I want to continue that."

Although relatively new to the Birmingham area, the sandwich shop's history goes back nearly four decades, when the senior Ramirez, after fleeing Fidel Castro's Cuba in early 1970s, settled in Atlanta and began selling Cuban sandwiches at a grocery store he and his wife opened there. After the store burned down, Ramirez opened Kool Korner in Atlanta's Midtown area, where it became a favorite with students at nearby Georgia Tech and made several "Best of Atlanta" lists over the years.

Kool Korner Sandwiches, which started in Atlanta, opened in this location in Vestavia Hills, Ala., in June 2009. Owners Ildesonso Ramirez, and his son, Bill, are looking for a new location after their lease expired. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)

Ramirez had to close his shop when the building was sold in 2008, and he moved to Birmingham to be near his son, Bill, and daughter-in-law, Haymee. Just a few months after moving here, though, he found a space in a former Firehouse Subs shop near the Vestavia Hills Publix, and he reopened Kool Korner in June 2009.

''I want to keep doing this not for the money,'' he said back then. ''Really, it's because I like doing this -- to make something good and to deal with the people and make friends.''

For the past six years, Ramirez has spent up to 70 hours a week at the shop, where he has treated his customers to the authentic pressed Cuban sandwiches that Southern food scholar John T. Edge once described as ''mojo-drenched exemplars of the plancha art" in his Garden & Gun magazine piece ''100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die."

Many of Ramirez's old Atlanta customers often stopped by when they were passing through Birmingham and filled their coolers with sandwiches to take home with them.

The Kool Korner menu also featured such Cuban dishes as roasted pork tamales, ground beef empanadas, black bean and Galician soup, and guava and cream cheese pastelitos.

Ramirez served his last customer at his Vestavia Hills location late last week, and he and his son are in the process of moving their equipment and furnishings out of the building.

A representative for the Blackwater Management Group, which manages the property, told AL.com this afternoon that it does not yet have a new tenant for the space.

The Ramirezes have looked at couple of other locations in the Vestavia Hills area, and they expect to reopen Kool Korner within the next few months, Bill Ramirez said.

"The places we are looking at have to be modified somewhat, but I would say three to four months," he said. "I would like it to be faster."

So would his father, who is eager to get back in the kitchen and has no thoughts of retiring.

"His hope and his dream is to reopen," the younger Ramirez said. "He wants to do that."

UPDATED at 4:18 p.m. CDT on Thursday, May 25, 2015, to add information from the Blackwater Management Group.