Cedar from Maine, music from Kentucky
It’ll take about six weeks beginning in mid-July to “stack” the logs for country singer Eddie Montgomery’s Steakhouse at Skylar’s Landing in Harrodsburg.
Allow another two or three weeks for roofing and a couple of months for installing electricity, plumbing and a professional sound system. Then the country duo of Montgomery Gentry can sing while the steaks are cooked and served.
“We are going to do all we can to have it open this year,” said Tommy Mitchell, Montgomery’s business partner. “I’m on a mission, let me tell you.”
The building is expected to cost as much as $3 million, but it’s basically a 16,000 square foot log cabin that will be trucked log-by-log on 18-wheelers to Harrodsburg from Katahdin Cedar Log Homes in Oakfield, Maine.
Kentuckians might well ask why the logs are coming all the way from Maine? If a Kentucky log cabin was good enough for the likes of Abe Lincoln, why wouldn’t it be good enough for Eddie Montgomery?
“We wanted a white cedar log home and we wanted a green company,” said Mitchell. “There was nobody around here (Kentucky) that offered that.”
White cedar from the north country around the Canadian border is rot resistant and provides good natural insulation. In addition, Katahdin is known for its “green” or environmentally friendly log cabin designs.
Another reason “we went directly to Katahdin” is that Mitchell recently worked with the company in Maine on a segment of the ABC television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
“They built the show’s first log home in four-and-a-half days and it was incredible,” he said.
Mitchell said bulldozers will begin leveling the site for Eddie Montgomery’s Steakhouse this week, weather permitting, and the concrete pad the building will sit on should be in place by the end of June.
“It’s been a long road, but it’s getting ready to happen,” he said. “The armies are coming in.”
