CROOKSTON-OPTICARE VISION ASSOCIATES MAKING PROGRESS ON CONSTRUCTION WITH OLD ARBY’S BUILDING

Crookston-Opticare Vision Associates has begun construction in the old Arby’s building on South Main Street to change it from a fast food restaurant to an optometry practice service.

Since the beginning of October 2022, Opticare doctors Steven Gander, Bruce Storhaug, Destin Coles, and Coles’ family have been working on completing the demolition of the building and moving the debris out of the building to leave it open for the construction of new rooms and equipment.
“The Coles family has largely been the one to break it up and start to put it in piles, and we’ve taken it out by pile by pile. Anyone from the Crookston area who’s seen a big dump trailer on Wednesday nights, it’s been the three doctors, and sometimes with the Coles kids, we’ve taken about 20 tons of debris out of here,” Dr. Steven Gander explained. “All of the walls, a lot of the extra flooring, the old sheetrock, and all of the old kitchen stuff is gone, and it’s been a dump trailer, probably ten loads, close to 20 tons of material have come out of here.”
Along with their families, the doctors have worked with the Northern Lumber and other local electricians, plumbers, and HVAC subcontractors to help finalize the design work of the new building.

While the building is far from complete, the doctors already have the interior visualized in their minds of how it will look when it is finished.
“A couple of things you will notice right away is in terms of the space that you can look at eyewear will be a larger and more well-lit space, and the eyewear will be displayed in a more efficient way that you can walk up, take a look, try it on, and enjoy it. In addition to that, one of the things we’re looking at now is a new retinal imaging system that’ll create a wide-field retinal image, which is something we wanted to add for quite some time but didn’t have the space to put it in, so we’re in the early stages of that,” said Ganders. “We also plan to bring in new actual examining equipment. Every time you’re coming into a new space, it’s the perfect time to do a nice upgrade on some of the normal stuff when you come to your eye doctor. Like the instrument you look through with lens in it, with the chair and the stands, we’ll be upgrading those items also to bring the best quality of eyecare we can to the Crookston area.”
The building will also have more exam rooms than their existing office across from the Grand Theatre and larger areas of space for testing rooms and equipment. And despite owning a new building with a large parking lot, Opticare is currently working with Scooter’s Coffee in East Grand Forks to have them set up a drive-thru coffee kiosk in the corner of the parking lot for customers to come and purchase a cup of coffee after their appointments and bring a lot of traffic to the area.

The building currently has the framing of the walls in place for each of the individual rooms but has almost split the floor in half as they have dug a large trench down the center of the building, which they dug up to connect the plumbing to the main sewer line. However, they found they had to replace the plumbing system entirely.
“We got all of the walls built, and we started trying to hook up the plumbing to the main sewer line exiting the building. But, we started to realize that the cast iron wasn’t in good shape,” Dr. Destin Coles explained. “It was too soft, cracked up, and tough to hook on to. So, the only solution was to dig a two-foot trench the whole length of the building with jackhammers, spades, and pickaxes to access that space to put a new PVC sewer line in so that we didn’t have any troubles plumbing-wise going down the road.”

Opticare is still working on completing the construction of the building, and while they do not have a move-in date planned yet, they hope to have the construction complete by the summer. Until then, the business will continue to be completed at their current shops in Crookston and Grand Forks. Opticare would also like to thank the citizens of Crookston for their many years of growth and loyalty and hopes for many more years of serving the people of the community in better ways than before.

Pictures of the building’s construction can be seen below-