Longtime enterprise in downtown Rigby becoming demolished this week

The web-site of the previous Me’n Stans Restaurant at 100 West Major Avenue in Rigby in October 2019. | Rett Nelson, EastIdahoNews.com file image

RIGBY – A creating that sat vacant for several years in downtown Rigby will soon be torn down.

Brent Tolman, an administrator with the Rigby City Renewal Company, tells EastIdahoNews.com the structure formerly occupied by the Me’n Stans cafe will be demolished later on this week.

“The intent is to choose it down, thoroughly clean up the lot and make it interesting to a new growth,” Tolman suggests.

The setting up was such a affliction that restoring it would have cost additional than it is really worth, he states.

“It looks good on the outside, but when we obtained into it, we discovered some asbestos and some deterioration,” claims Tolman. “There are parts that aren’t risk-free to walk by means of because of collapse, so the agency boarded it up to hold people today out of it.”

He also says a tree was rising in the concrete pad at the rear of the developing.

The company will be submitting requests for proposals to decide on “the most acceptable improvement for that site” the moment the venture is total. A draft will be approved at its following assembly on Feb. 18.

The Rigby Urban Renewal Agency bought the Me’n Stans making and the vacant large amount powering it from the prior entrepreneurs past August. Tolman states they felt it was a good match for a rehabilitation task.

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Andrew and Jorelle McClellan purchased it in October 2019 just after it experienced sat vacant for two and a 50 percent several years. They had been scheduling to rent it out as business place for other companies. Renovations immediately bought underway, but safety fears with the setting up combined 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 made available to buy it a week right after we purchased it,” suggests Jorelle. “We informed (them) no, and then they saved asking us for about a calendar year, and eventually we just determined to sell it.”

The closure of Me’n Stans in Could 2017 was not meant to be everlasting, Donae Colborn, the son of the restaurant’s unique owner, Stan Colborn, told us in 2018. When the town started out taking away avenue lights in link with the Maverik gasoline station design, Stan, who was 82 at the time, created a break up-2nd choice to permanently shut down.

Me’n Stans has a long background in eastern Idaho relationship back again 50 yrs ago. The Jefferson Star studies Stan Colborn to start with opened a Rexburg area in August 1969. The Rigby site opened sometime in the 1980s after many years of operation in St. Anthony, Jackson and West Yellowstone.

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Major and Condition Road, the place the Rigby retail outlet sat, is an iconic location for longtime inhabitants. Before Me’n Stans, Walker’s Cafe occupied the area, and in the 1920s, it was house to 1 of the biggest division retailers in the space.

Just one of the most requested new organizations in town above the past numerous several years is a loved ones diner. Though it is far too early to know what will conclusion up occupying this corner, Tolman suggests he’s searching forward to viewing what variety of organization it appeals to.

“I feel it is going to be useful to the city of Rigby as soon as that corner is cleaned up and some thing new is constructed there,” states Tolman. “There have been some developers convey desire in the property in excess of the previous month, but the agency is not at the position of getting into any negotiations with them (still). At the time we place the proposal out, we’ll see what type of responses we get again, and board customers will make a conclusion.”