Burger King in Havre - One step closer

The plans and paperwork for the construction of a Burger King in Havre is expected to be finalized by the end of February, Meridian Restaurants Marketing Director Vy Trinh said this morning.

Meridian Restaurants announced in August of 2018 they plan to build a Burger King in Havre. In September, company representatives said they planned to put the project out for bids in November and planned to start construction in April or May.

The city connected water lines in October to the planned building site in preparation for the business coming.

Since then, some of the plans have been changed and Meridian has worked on finalizing paperwork, Trinh said.

She said the restaurant is planned to open some time this year. Trinh added that the plans for the Burger King are mostly the same as before, with video gaming and play area for kids, automatic kiosks and state of the art equipment. Although now, she said, Meridian Restaurants plans to have a kitchen theater.

A kitchen theater, Trinh said, is an open kitchen where customers can see from outside of the kitchen what the employees are doing and see the flaming grill.

“It’s a cool concept,” she added.

Meridian Restaurants Director of Construction Jason Wolff said Monday the company has started the process of submitting the new plans to the city for its approval. Following the city’s approval, he said, Meridian Restaurants can begin finding a contractor to build the new building.

He said it is still pretty early in the process to tell when construction will be completed and, within the next five weeks, they will have a solid idea about how they can move forward in the process.

Monday, Wolff said, the project manager contacted the Havre government and started the process of updating the plans. He said that the application Meridian Restaurants submitted last year was approved.

Havre Public Works Director Dave Peterson said today that Meridian Restaurants did submit updated plans and the changes mostly consisted of electrical and excavation differences.

He added that the city will review the plans, and the process should be finished after a couple of weeks.

If they decided to break ground in the spring, Peterson said, the city will have all the documents and paperwork ready and approved.