A wrecking crew made quick work of knocking down an aging office building next to the shuttered Coachman’s diner on State Street this week.
In doing so, they offered the latest surprise for the legendary and mysterious restaurant: They left Coachman’s standing.
Building Salt Lake stopped by the site this week to see the demolition in progress and spoke with the team tasked with tearing down the building on site.
Former Coachman’s owner Mike Nikols had successfully rezoned his family’s property in a surprise quest to tear down the buildings and erect a mixed-use residential building on the site. He struggled for months to obtain financing for the project before dying suddenly in December at the age of 58.
The property was listed for sale in November, but apparent disagreements among the family led to it being pulled from the market.
The demolition crew told Building Salt Lake that demolishing Coachman’s was “not part of their scope.”
Nikols requested a permit to demolish the restaurant in 2022, but the permit was never issued. City records show the family requested a new permit in June that specified the 21,000-square-foot office building would come down. They received it earlier this month.
Preserving the restaurant keeps open the possibility that the Nikols family moves to reopen it more than three years after Nikols closed it.
Renderings that were released when Nikols was working to obtain city approval for the mixed-use building showed a Coachman’s restaurant incorporated into the new building. It could have been rebuilt not far from its current location, the renderings showed.
No other permit has been requested for the site.
The Nikols family couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
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