Longtime enterprise in downtown Rigby remaining demolished this 7 days

The internet site of the previous Me’n Stans Cafe at 100 West Key Street in Rigby in October 2019. | Rett Nelson, EastIdahoNews.com file image

RIGBY – A constructing that sat vacant for decades in downtown Rigby will soon be torn down.

Brent Tolman, an administrator with the Rigby Urban Renewal Company, tells EastIdahoNews.com the composition formerly occupied by the Me’n Stans cafe will be demolished later this 7 days.

“The intent is to consider it down, clean up the great deal and make it attractive to a new development,” Tolman states.

The making was these a condition that restoring it would have expense more than it is truly worth, he states.

“It appears to be great on the exterior, but when we got into it, we located some asbestos and some deterioration,” claims Tolman. “There are places that are not protected to wander by due to the fact of collapse, so the agency boarded it up to retain people today out of it.”

He also says a tree was expanding in the concrete pad powering the making.

The agency will be publishing requests for proposals to select “the most ideal progress for that site” as soon as the challenge is entire. A draft will be permitted at its upcoming assembly on Feb. 18.

The Rigby City Renewal Company bought the Me’n Stans setting up and the vacant lot behind it from the prior entrepreneurs very last August. Tolman suggests they felt it was a fantastic suit for a rehabilitation task.

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Andrew and Jorelle McClellan purchased it in October 2019 after it experienced sat vacant for two and a 50 percent several years. They experienced been arranging to lease it out as office place for other corporations. Renovations rapidly acquired underway, but basic safety fears with the developing blended with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic introduced almost everything to a halt.

Andrew and Jorelle McClellan renovating the basement of Me’n Stans in Oct. 2019. | Rett Nelson, EastIdahoNews.com

“Rigby City Renewal presented to invest in it a 7 days immediately after we acquired it,” suggests Jorelle. “We informed (them) no, and then they held inquiring us for about a 12 months, and lastly we just decided to promote it.”

The closure of Me’n Stans in Might 2017 wasn’t supposed to be everlasting, Donae Colborn, the son of the restaurant’s authentic proprietor, Stan Colborn, informed us in 2018. When the town started off removing street lights in link with the Maverik gasoline station construction, Stan, who was 82 at the time, manufactured a break up-second determination to permanently shut down.

Me’n Stans has a extended background in eastern Idaho courting back again 50 decades ago. The Jefferson Star reports Stan Colborn 1st opened a Rexburg area in August 1969. The Rigby locale opened sometime in the 1980s just after decades of procedure in St. Anthony, Jackson and West Yellowstone.

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Principal and State Street, where the Rigby store sat, is an iconic place for longtime residents. Right before Me’n Stans, Walker’s Cafe occupied the place, and in the 1920s, it was household to 1 of the most significant section shops in the spot.

One of the most asked for new businesses in city above the final many a long time is a relatives diner. While it is much too early to know what will end up occupying this corner, Tolman says he’s hunting forward to seeing what form of company it appeals to.

“I feel it’s going to be effective to the town of Rigby as soon as that corner is cleaned up and a thing new is produced there,” says Tolman. “There have been some developers categorical curiosity in the home in excess of the previous month, but the agency is not at the place of coming into any negotiations with them (yet). When we place the proposal out, we’ll see what type of responses we get back again, and board customers will make a conclusion.”