The Patio Project: How it started

Uncategorized | 1 comment

During the Spring of 2017, Patio owner Lana Arthur, and Sysco Food representative Eric Acton were in one of their weekly meetings when the idea of a walk-in fridge was brought up to help maximize storage for the upcoming summer months. The idea had been floating around for a while now, but this particular meeting was the real game-changer for Lana. They really wanted to be able to keep up with the influx of ice cream orders during the summer months, as the demand grew higher, but did not have to storage capacity to keep up with the amount being sold at that time. She recalls a specific conversation with Eric that happened in roughly May of 2017 when Eric looked at her and said: “You are doing yourself such a disservice by not having the proper storage.” She says for some reason that day it really resonated with her that he was right and that it was time to make the changes needed. As their conversation continued he mentioned how there were other restaurants in the county that had utilized grants to help them with their remodeling projects. He gave Lana Tim Chamberlin’s number, telling her to call him and find out what kind of grants Patio would qualify for.

She gave Tim a call and they set up a meeting. In preparation for the meeting, she had settled on three specific things that she knew needed to be updated. The first was a new roof, the second was to stabilize the foundation, as the northwest corner of the building was collapsing, having already dropped 4-6 inches. And the third was storage space.

When she met with Tim. He referred her to Natalie Randal, whose position for the county is to help small businesses with funding options. They met up at Patio where Natalie gave Lana all the options she had and explained how the grants worked. The two grants that appeared to be the most beneficial for Patio was the Reap grant, which covers bringing your building back up to code and making it energy efficient, and The Fast Track grant, which would help cover the additional storage, but it also required that she double her seating area, meaning that a dining room had to be added to the project, and it was non-negotiable. Lana knew that if she could increase the amount of storage she had, she had to increase the amount of room for customers. She thought of all the customers, especially during the summer months that would come and go when there was not enough seating in the building for everyone. Without much convincing, she knew that it would be the best option moving forward with this project!

When the breadth of the project opened to her, she realized all the things she wanted and had to do. They would have to bring everything up to code, which meant electrical, windows, cooking equipment, etc. Becoming a total reconstruction project. 

She was a bit intimidated by the idea of undertaking such a huge project. Specifically, one day coming home from work, she went straight to her room and knelt down to pray and asked to receive the assurance that this was the right decision. She immediately felt like it was, and that she knew that if she kept moving forward and handled the project in the most Christlike way she could, that it wouldn’t be stopped!

Both grants were in place by the end of November 2017, after hundreds of documents, and hours upon hours of paperwork. After they were in place she was referred to the SBDC by Natalie Randal, to ensure she had all the funding she would need. She started working with Beth McCue from the SBDC in January 2018 and they met together multiple times a week. They decided to go through Zion’s bank for the reconstruction loan, spending hours and hours going through all the required documents for the loan, going through it page by page together. In between meeting with Beth, Lana would go home and do the paperwork she had to do before their next meeting. They had the loan documents done by the end of February after hundreds of hours of work and determination to get it done. At that point, the paperwork was turned in and Lana was told to start working with an architect. She hired her brother in law, Loren Sadler Architect, out of Winslow Arizona. He met with Lana multiple times at Patio and took pictures. They worked very closely together, and he came up with the plans for the project, which they then turned over to the city.

They ran into a lot of obstacles with the city while trying to bring the building to code, as the building was built in the 1950s and it was 2018. Fortunately, one of the huge blessings in all of this, is that Ricky Arthur, Co-Owner of Patio Diner, currently works with Northern Electric, and was hired on pro bono to do the electrical work within the budget. 

After getting the electrical work figured out, she found out that due to the increased amount of seating in the dining area, legally Patio had to have more parking spaces as well. Another huge blessing occurred when Wayne Asbury generously offered Lana a parking easement so that everything could go through. 

While still trying to finalize parking and electrical work, Lana was at a bit of a standstill because she was about $50,000 over budget. During this time she was trying to figure out how to resolve the budget issues when Beth McCue called her out of the blue to see how the project was going. Lana told her about the budget issue stalling the project. Luckily, Beth had just been at a conference in Price, UT, and met a woman whose job was to work with rural businesses on GAP loans, to help bridge the gap between what the bank offered and what you actually needed to complete the project. Beth gave her Lana’s number and within 24 hours she contacted Lana and they were able to move forward, all issues resolved!

The plans were then submitted to Tri Hurst construction, and after multiple meetings, they came up with a plan and solid budget that was within Patio’s needs, it was like their own little miracle. At the end of July 2018, all the paperwork was signed, at that point 1 year and 3 months into the project. Construction started August 18th, 2018.

We are so thankful for all those who helped make this happen, we all witnessed miracles happen to make this work. 

Stay tuned for the second half of our reconstruction tale! We hope you enjoyed reading what it took to begin construction! Lana loves Patio, and the work was worth it!