“The Dairy” in Downtown Overton is Coming Soon

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

A new restaurant and gathering place in an historic old building in downtown Overton is currently receiving some final touches and is expected to be opened in the coming weeks.

The new spot, called “The Dairy,” has been under construction in the old St. John’s Catholic Church building at 150 N. Moapa Valley Blvd. for nearly two years now. When it finally opens, it will offer an array of services to the community.

It will be the Overton location for Soda Bomb a popular purveyor of legendary custom soda drinks, made from scratch cookies and other tasty treats.

It will also have a full restaurant kitchen featuring a different chef with a different menu every day of the week.

And finally, it will offer a family-friendly community gathering place for people and groups of all ages.
“The whole idea of it is to just have a place where people feel welcome to come in, sit down and be together,” said building owner Jean Gottschalk. “We saw that as something that the community really needs. And it was our vision to provide it.”

Gottschalk had been eyeing the old building ever since he moved to Moapa Valley several years ago. He said that he was just drawn to it.
“We saw this building was for sale and we immediately thought that it was a nice building and that it’s a shame it is vacant and left to just fall apart,” Gottschalk said. “We decided that we really should do something with that.”

But it took a while for all the elements to line up and make buying the building a viable business decision, Gottschalk said.
“The previous owner wanted a lot for the building, and the building needed a lot of work,” he added. “And we were going to be funding all of this with bank loans. So we needed to be able to get enough rent on the building to cover all of that, plus the maintenance costs. That wasn’t easy to find from local businesses.”

That is where businessman Scott Knight comes into the picture. Knight comes from the Phoenix area in Arizona. While still in college there, he established a successful business model: Soda Bomb. The business offers an array of custom fizzy drinks, polished off with fresh-baked, heritage-recipe cookies.

“That is something that has always set us apart,” Knight said of his cookie offerings. “Other soda shops buy cookies from a common place off site and distribute them. But ours are all baked from scratch on site – every morning from family recipes.”

Knight’s business was so popular in Phoenix that, within a short period, he had expanded and opened multiple locations there.

But Knight’s young family had their eyes set towards Moapa Valley. His wife, Lexie grew up in Moapa Valley and is the daughter of Jeff and Jolynn Keel of Overton. The couple had yearned to return here to raise their family and to open a type of business that wasn’t far from what Gottschalk had been envisioning.

And so it happened that Knight and Gottschalk got together and began discussing how they could work together on “The Dairy” with Soda Bomb as a kind of anchor business. They divided up the necessary renovations into what should be provided by the owner as opposed to what should be done by the tenant. Then, about two years ago, they went to work.

The heritage aspect of the old building was especially appealing to the Knights. Long before it was ever a church building for St. John’s, the structure was originally built to be a dairy and creamery.

There are still vestiges of that era evident in the structure and design of the building. In keeping with that heritage, Knight said that he plans on having a gourmet ice cream counter at the new Overton location. The store will be serving the famous BYU ice cream.

Then, of course, there is what Gottschalk is calling,“The Kitchen.” The concept comes from a vision, devised by Gottschalk himself, of offering a spot in town where different food vendors could rent a full commercial kitchen for a day and offer their unique cuisine to the community. Knight immediately saw potential in this idea as a way to help pay the rent on the space.

“We have already put the word out on this and we have 10 or 12 food vendors already registered to rent the kitchen out,” Knight said. “So our goal is to have a different cuisine every night of the week. Initially, we are allowing our chefs to book up to once per week. They can come in and cook their food.”

Knight said that there will be a mobile app already developed under the Soda Bomb umbrella, for people to preorder from these vendors as well. “They will be able to go in and see what is cooking each night and what is on the menus,” he said. “Then they can place their orders.”

Customers can then come to “The Dairy” and enjoy their meal in the large dining space at the restaurant.
“We have designed the dining area to be welcoming,” Knight said. “It will have a kind of ‘modern industrial farmhouse’ feel. We want it to be a place where people can just come and hang out.”

The dining area will have tables and chairs as well as a small fireplace with couch and easy chairs. Board games will also be available for those who want to linger. And that kind of lingering will be encouraged.

There will also be curb-side delivery service available for take-out.

To get ready for all of this, the renovations to the building have been extensive. That has taken a good deal of time and a lot of money for both owner and operator.

“We had to redo 100 percent of the electric, 100 percent of the plumbing all the way to the street, and 100 percent of the HVAC,” Gottschalk said. “Plus we had to install restrooms that weren’t there before; and we had to put in these gigantic kitchen hoods and a huge grease trap for the commercial kitchen. That was a lot!”

Fortunately, Gottschalk also owns a general contracting company called Moapa Valley Builders. The company took on the extensive remodel work at “The Dairy.” bringing in the necessary sub-contractors to do much of the more difficult work.

To help save money, Knight did a lot of the tenant improvements himself.
Gottschalk said that the renovation to the building has posed a huge challenge, given the scarcity of labor and materials in the post-COVID environment. Everything cost much more than expected.
“I know that there are a lot of rumors going around, but I want to dispell one of them,” Gottschalk said. “It hasn’t taken forever because of the county. The county staff has been very responsive and have done their jobs in the time that they’re supposed to. We have submitted plans and they have got them back to us quickly. So it isn’t the county.”

Rather it was this rapid escalation of costs, Gottschalk added.. “Because of the environment we have been in, we have had to be selective and wait for subcontractors willing to do the work at a fair price rather than being grossly over-inflated,” he said. “Otherwise, we just wouldn’t be able to do this project.”

Knight says that he is eager to get the place open so that he can start bringing in revenue rather than just writing checks on the improvements. He has some great ideas to bring people in to “The Dairy.”

A lot of focus will be on bringing in the local youth and making the place a popular teen hangout. An area will be set aside for an activity space with a billiard table or air hockey. In the room under the old bell tower, there are plans to provide a spot for kids to play video games together.

“We plan on staying open later, like for Fridays and Saturdays until 11 pm or midnight,” Knight said. “We will do home game win after-parties here. And we may even utilize the patio area in the back to have live band concerts and events like that.”

Asked if any interesting historical finds had taken place during the renovation of the old building, Knight said that there wasn’t much of anything out of the ordinary found. But he did take the opportunity to dispell an apparently common local myth.

“I guess that there is a rumor that a million dollars was buried by someone under this building a long time ago,” he said chuckling. “People have tried to dig things up three or four times during the history of the building. But I can tell you, there is nothing there. Trust me, that would have made this project go so much faster if we had been able to find that!”