Truckee Taco Bell Construction Starts With Demolition

TRUCKEE, CA (Monday, July 23, 2007) - The start of a new Truckee fast food restaurant meant the end of The Beginnings.

The Beginnings restaurant on Deerfield Drive, which had seen better days long ago, was felled Thursday to make way for a new Taco Bell, marking the start of construction on the new eatery.

Plans to replace the dilapidated two-story building call for a one-story, roughly 2,400-square-foot restaurant along with parking, lighting and street improvements.

"We are starting construction right away," said franchise owner Gary Lyon. "First will be the foundation, parking lot, underground connections, and road work, which we hope to finish by mid-September."

From there, Lyon said depending on weather, he would like to have the building up and a roof on by Oct. 15, but said that goal may be optimistic.

"We'll see how far we get before the weather flies," Lyon said.

If contractors are able to stick to that time frame, interior work would continue into fall and the restaurant completed and opened some time in the winter, Lyon said.

"It's just hard to tell at this point, but we would be open for business a week or two after construction is complete, whenever that happens," Lyon said.

Denyelle Nishimori, project planner with the Town of Truckee, said the project will include the repaving of the portion of the cratered western end of Deerfield Drive that fronts the fast-food restaurant.

Nishimori also said the project will likely improve the intersection of Deerfield Drive and Coldstream Road, possibly with a stop sign, and include a sidewalk in front of the new building. The Sierra Sun office is located on Coldstream Road.

Past hurdles
Nishimori said the town has issued all the necessary permits for the new Taco Bell, but the restaurant faced a few challenges earlier in the planning process.

Environmental contamination from a previous site owner, a Taco Bell franchise sign that had to meet Truckee standards, and questions about how the restaurant would fit into the town's new affordable-housing policy, all took time to work through.

Originally met with resistance, the chain's purple and magenta colors were later permitted by the planning commission, but the Taco Bell sign will be wooden rather than illuminated plastic, the Sun reported two years ago.

In 2006, the town ordered a cleanup of the site, including the removal of contaminated soil.

Finally, the franchise owner faced a new town requirement that new projects provide affordable housing, but the town ruled that Taco Bell's application came in before the new ordinance, Lyon said.

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