The latest rumour owners of the Energy City Dairy Queen have heard was that the store would be turning into a Burger King. Sorry to disappoint any Whopper fans out there, but Dairy Queen will live on, coming back with a completely new interior. Louise Vandenhurk, Dairy Queen owner, said work is finally underway to restore the local restaurant and ice cream shop, following a fire that shut the business down last June. She noted they did encounter some unexpected holdups once work began on the building. With the building closed down throughout the winter, Vandenhurk said the sewer lines froze, as a result of plugged grease traps. Without any water being flushed through for several months, the mixture turned into something like cement. There were also a few surprises with the floor and the roof, which had to be taken care of, setting things back a couple of weeks. "Now it's just a matter of putting it all back together," said Vandenhurk. "According to the drawing, it's going to be really amazing. We were already updated, but now the colour code has changed a little bit. What the customer is going to see with the changes in the front, it's going to different colours and a little bit different set-up."Some of the biggest changes will be behind the scenes, and she noted the ventilation will be at capacity, where it wasn't before. Absolutely everything in the refurbished store will be new, as the smoke damage from the fire left nothing salvageable aside from the building's shell. The only thing they didn't have to replace was their charbroiler, which was new before the fire but hadn't yet been installed. "Three days before the fire, our charbroiler, which was supposed to come last March but didn't arrive until June, and being that it had been such a busy weekend we decided to put it in our rail car, and never did take it out of the rail car, so we do still have our new charbroiler."The ownership did renovations themselves about a year before the fire, and while going through that, they brought in new equipment. "The only thing we hadn't renovated was our work area. We had done minimal changeover in our back area, which didn't make it very comfortable for us. Now we had an opportunity to create something that will work great for us." She said things are happening very quickly, and when the work moves along problem free, visible progress can be seen in just a week. "Our equipment list wasn't finalized, and we weren't sure how long that was going to take. There's a lot going on in there. It's going great," said Vandenhurk, who noted she isn't yet prepared to divulge target opening date, because they don't have one yet. She did, however, say Estevanites can expect to the store opening this spring. "It was gutted. All there was in there was actually a cement floor and rafters. Everything was gone," she said. "As for progress, it's amazing what has been going on in there. It's starting to look like a store again. They're working diligently all the time."Vandenhurk added that because there wasn't much fire, and all the damage was a result of the smoke, the actual structure was still a viable option to clean up and renovate, rather than tear it down completely and start over from scratch. "We're very excited about it," added Vandenhurk. "I think it's going to be great."
