Hilton Head BBQ restaurant demolished 10 months after fire. Here are rebuilding plans
The Smokehouse restaurant on Hilton Head Island’s south end was reduced to a pile of rubble on Thursday morning.
The building was demolished to make room for a new 7,515-square-foot restaurant, which will be built on the same footprint as the previous one. Owner Jerry Leonard said the building was “a total loss” after a fire last June.
Demolition of the building began 10 months to the day of the fire, which started near the back electrical panel around 6 a.m. on June 9 and burned for several hours.
The fire caused the restaurant’s ceiling to collapse on the dining room, and fire crews had to break a hole in the roof to get to the network of wooden supports that were feeding the blaze.
Leonard’s new plan for the site is a two-story restaurant with three outdoor patios, an outdoor plaza, a reclaimed outdoor fireplace and a promise for a rooftop bar. The exterior of the restaurant, although preliminary and subject to change, appears modern with glass and metal accents.
“We hope to salvage iconic elements of the old Smokehouse to connect the new restaurant to its past,” architect Joe DePauw of Parker Design Group wrote to the design review board in December.
Leonard said Thursday that he hopes the restaurant will be complete by early 2021.
“It’ll be a couple months before we see a structure going up,” he said. “We’re just excited to finally have something going on around here.”
Town Fire Marshal Joheida Fister said in December that although the department has confirmed the electrical panel was the start of the fire, the department has not found a specific cause.
The investigation into the fire is being carried out by the company that insured the building, as is common in fires that are ruled accidental.
The Smokehouse has been located off Palmetto Bay Road since 2010, when it moved from Pope Avenue near Coligny Circle, according to previous reports from The Island Packet.
