BOUNTIFUL—After more than 40 years in business DeBoer’s Running Store closed in October. The popular place for buying shoes may be gone but Bountiful City has plans for the now vacant building that sits along Main Street. The city bought the building with the intention of using the space for a restaurant.

“It’s part of the visioning process for downtown,” said City Manager Gary Hill. “We get a lot of questions from the public asking why we don’t have a restaurant.”

Main Street has a lot of unique, authentic older buildings that can’t accommodate a restaurant very easily, he said. “We decided to keep an eye out using RDA funds.”

The mayor was visiting businesses and found out Dennis DeBoer was going to retire, said Hill. “We asked about the building and he said he’d been leasing it from the owners out of state. We got a hold of the owners and asked if they’d been interested in selling the building. They said they would.”

Hill said they were thrilled. “It’s a great location. It backs up on Town Square, has great visibility and the option for dining on the sidewalk.”

The next step is determining what needs to be done, he said. “Before we purchased it we went to restaurants like this to hear their experiences. We met with several people onsite, thought about the space and asked if they thought it could be successful. We got a lot of positive feedback.”

Before the city pulled the trigger, Hill said they had to make sure certain things were done like a grease trap and whether the HVAC system was up to par. 

“It’s an outside shell,” he said. “It will be the tenant’s vision on how to use the space. That’s our plan, renovate or tear it down and build new. We’ll work with the tenant on putting their own improvements in.”

There are some criteria that are important to the city, said Hill. “It needs to be open afternoons and evenings and on weekends. Evening business is really important. The goal is to have people come to Main Street and stay.”

Blacksmith Ice Cream is right there, he said. “It would be fun to complement what they do.”

Hill said the city is looking for a sit down restaurant. “Not necessarily one with a waiter or waitress. There's an ideal opportunity for dining on the back side where you could have a pick up window. There’s some really fun options there.”

Although from the front it looks like it is a two story building it’s not. “It has a faux facade,” said Hill. “There’s a main floor with a basement. The main floor is 2,278 square feet and the basement is a good size. Feedback we’ve gotten from potential restaurateurs is that they'd use the main floor for the restaurant and the basement as storage.”

The city will bring in an architect to evaluate the best way to get the space into shape, he said. “Whether to rebuild or remodel. We plan to make a decision by late spring then we’ll find a contractor to start working on the space. My estimate would be about a year from now for the whole process.”

Hill believes the surrounding businesses will welcome a restaurant. “They’ll have the additional foot traffic that would come from a restaurant.”

Over the last decade the city has made a concerted effort to use RDA funds downtown, he said. “We want to bring people downtown. We’re looking to take the next step with anchors from the private sector coming in to help expose Main Street to folks who don’t realize the hidden gem we have here.”