The remnants of the former McKenzie’s Grille in Saranac Lake were demolished on Monday. A crew from D&S Excavating plans to finish demolishing the restaurant this week. The owners of the restaurant plan to rebuild it. This staple Saranac Lake eatery, located on Lake Flower Avenue, burned to the ground in a fire that took firefighters several hours to knock down on Aug. 11. (Enterprise photo — Lauren Yates)

SARANAC LAKE — Much of the remnants of McKenzie’s Grille were reduced to a pile of rubble on Monday as a construction crew worked to demolish the Saranac Lake restaurant, which burned to the ground in August. But this isn’t the end for McKenzie’s Grille — the owners intend to rebuild the eatery, according to Best Western Director of Sales June Hosier.

The charred remains of McKenzie’s Grille have sat untouched for almost exactly two months. That’s because the owner of McKenzie’s Grille — Jay Patel, who also owns the neighboring Best Western, both through management group Hari Krushna Inc. — has been working with insurance companies to get the demolition process approved, according to Hosier. Then, Patel had to move through the permitting and bidding process for the demolition.

Hosier said the next step is working with insurance companies to rebuild McKenzie’s Grille. She said the timeline for rebuilding is up in the air as the owners move through different approval processes.

“It’s a process, but we’re doing it all in the proper channels like anybody would,” Hosier said. “It just takes a while.”

Heather Lund, the Best Western front office manager, added that the beginning of the rebuilding process would be delayed with the imminent onset of winter.

The McKenzie’s Grille fire started with a short in the ceiling’s electrical system, according to Lund. She thought that it was a 1950s-era building that was remodeled in 1992, but she said the building’s electrical system likely hadn’t been touched since then. She didn’t think that the updated electrical system was an inherently faulty one — she said it was “just an old building.”

“It wasn’t anything that anybody could have foreseen happening,” she said.

Darwin Putnam — the owner of D & S Excavating LLC, which is demolishing the restaurant — said on Monday that his crew would likely be demolishing the building all week, with work expected to end this Friday. He said his crew plans to tear down the building, rip out the concrete foundation, dispose of the rubble, then backfill the foundation to prep the site for future building. D & S Excavating also demolished the Mid-Station Lodge at Whiteface Mountain Ski Center after it burned down in 2019, according to Putnam.

Lund said that the management team from Best Western/McKenzie’s Grille is “just as sad” about the restaurant burning down as everyone else. It was a staple of the community for a long time, she said, and one that was personal to her — she said she “basically grew up in that restaurant.”

“We’re definitely looking to the future,” she said. “… We definitely don’t want to go without it in the community. It’ll be back.”